We’re still going through these recently released YouTube/Viacom litigation documents, and it’s becoming clear that we can’t take everything that’s being said by either party at face value (as if we didn’t know that already). We’ve come across a good example. In Viacom’s document Statement of Undisputed Facts, it presented the following seemingly damning passage that indicates that YouTube co-founder Steve Chen was advocating pirating movies (a quote that’s now appearing in quite a few news articles). But Viacom may be misrepresenting the evidence. Here’s their version:
In a July 29,2005 email about competing video websites, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen wrote to YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, “steal it!”, and Chad Hurley responded: “hmm, steal the movies?”
Steve Chen replìed: “we have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. how much traffic will we get from personal videos? remember, the only reason why our traffic surged was due to a video of this type. . . . viral videos will tend to be THOSE type of videos.”
The quote seems to be referring to full-length movies, though viral videos are mentioned (it’s unclear in this context whether they’re saying movies will go viral, or if they’re talking about traditionally more viral video clips). As it turns out, it’s the latter. And they were probably joking about it. Here’s the actual Email thread, in chronological order:
SUBJECT: Re:http://www.filecabi.net/
Jul 29, 2005 1:05 AM, Steve Chen wrote:
steal it!
Jul 29, 2005 1 :25 AM, Chad Hurley wrote:
hmm, steal the movies?
Jul 29, 2005 1 :33 AM, Steve Chen wrote:
haha ya.
or something.
just something to watch out for. check out their alexa ranking.
-s
Jul 29, 2005 7:45 AM, Chad Hurley wrote:
hmm, i know they are getting a lot of traffic… but it’s because they are a stupidvideos.com-type of site. they might make enough money to pay hosing bills, but sites like this and big-boys.com will never go public. I would really like to build something more valuable and more useful. actually build something that people will talk about and changes the way people use video on the internet.
Jul 29 2005 6:51 AM, Steve Chen wrote:
right, i understand those goals but, at the same time, we have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. how much traffic will we get from the personal videos? remember, the only reason why our traffic surged was due to a video of this type.
i’m not really disagreeing with you but i also think we shouldn’t be so high & mighty and think we’re better than these guys. viral videos will tend to be THOSE type of videos.
-s
Jul 29 2005 6:56 AM, Steve Chen Wrote:
another thing. still a fundamental difference between us and most of those other sites. we do have a community and it’s ALL user generated content.
-s
It’s worth pointing out that the subject of the Email thread was ‘http://www.filecabi.net’, and that big-boys.com is now Break.com — it’s pretty clear that Chen and Hurley are referring to the brief, dumb sort of videos that often go viral as opposed to full length movies. And, based on the ‘haha’ comment (which is ommitted from Viacom’s document), Chen and Hurley may have just been joking about stealing any content at all.
This doesn’t clear YouTube by any means (there are still plenty of other suspect quotes). But it casts some doubt on the rest of Viacom’s ‘undisputed facts’.
Geoffrey A. Fowler / Digits: Facebook Co-Founder Hughes Launches Philanthropic Venture Jumo — Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook and director of online organizing for Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, unveiled his new project on Thursday: a Web site for charitable organizations.
There are good things about conferences and there are bad things about conferences. One of the bad things is how little the audience gets to participate directly in the content being created. Sometimes there’s a question and answer period at the end of a panel where people line up at a microphone to ask questions. But that’s usually it. Other than booing and applause, and of course the back channel on Twitter, there’s not much of a feedback loop.
That’s partially a good thing, of course. A room full of 2,000 people all shouting their opinions on a topic isn’t much of anything except chaos. But sometimes there are people in the audience who have a really interesting perspective on a topic, or even know more about the topic than the people on stage.
The idea of an unconference has evolved over the years with Foo Camp and BAR Camp (and others) where the audience and the speakers are one. Those types of events are really rewarding, but they don’t work on a large scale single track event. Again, it would just be chaos.
A couple of years ago Dave Winer had the idea of putting people from the audience, literally, on stage (there’s a link out there somewhere but I can’t find it). As far as I know no one has ever really experimented with this yet. But we’re going to try it out at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York on May 24-26.
We’re going to leave an empty seat on stage for many of the group panels at TechCrunch Disrupt and invite someone from the audience to come up and participate. I’m not sure how exactly we’re going to do this yet. We could just ask for a volunteer from the audience right before the panel, for example. But a better way might be to take volunteers for the panels early on in the event and pre-screen them for interestingness, passion for the topic, knowledge, etc.
I particularly like the idea of including audience members in the group of experts who judge and comment on new startups launching.
I’m guessing some of the smartest things on stage will be said by these audience members. And it will certainly freshen the format. And I really like the idea of a panel of top experts in a field along with someone who may not have the resume, but certainly has the knowledge and opinions, to be up there too.
We’ll expand the discussion of this on the Disrupt blog over the coming weeks, and announce firmer plans closer to the event.
Zak Cohen / Google Mobile Blog: Introducing Google Buzz widget for Android — Since we launched Google Buzz for mobile, we've been working on ways to make it quicker and easier to share your thoughts and experiences while you're out and about. — Today, we're excited to release a Google Buzz widget for Android phones …
We’re still going through these recently released YouTube/Viacom litigation 
There are good things about conferences and there are bad things about conferences. One of the bad things is how little the audience gets to participate directly in the content being created. Sometimes there’s a question and answer period at the end of a panel where people line up at a microphone to ask questions. But that’s usually it. Other than booing and applause, and of course the back channel on Twitter, there’s not much of a feedback loop.
