A 3-year long legal tussle between media conglomerate Viacom Inc. and service provider YouTube will see a new turn, as a federal judge preparing to release documents that will expose their secrets and other confidential details.
In this legal tussle over the copyright law now, details are expected to be disclosed as both the parties are citing some of the documents as they try to persuade U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in New York to decide the case without a trial.
These details will include some of the evidence that Viacom and Google-owned YouTube have collected to prove their respective points, but have kept under wraps so far in their long dispute.
Each side will likely be pointing to things that the other might find embarrassing.
The evidence is expected to provide insights into the early strategies of YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and how they responded to copyright complaints that quickly accumulated a few months after the Web site’s 2005 debut.
The documents also could reveal whether other media suitors tried to buy YouTube before Google acquired the site for $1.76 billion in 2006.
Viacom, the owner of Paramount Pictures and cable TV channels alleges that YouTube built its early success by rampantly infringing on copyrights.
YouTube on the other hand maintains that it follows the copyright laws governed in Internet.
One of the biggest disputes in the case is how YouTube monitored its site for copyright violations before Google bought it.
Though other content producers also initially complained about copyright abuse at YouTube, many media companies have since struck revenue-sharing deals with the site.