Well, Nick Denton not only said it best, but demonstrated it best: Viacom’s titanic 1 billion dollar lawsuit is nothing but a huge pile of hypocrisy.  Quick recap (since I failed to blog about it when it broke) — Viacom’s negotiations with YouTube/ Google were widely reported last fall as a prelude to something special between the two companies.  Turns out that negotiations have fallen flat, and Viacom has whipped out the lawsuit bat.

However, as one more bit of tinder on the “the-lawsuit’s-real-but-its-probably-a-bargaining-chip-for-further-negotiations” fire, it may surprise you to know that Viacom own’s one particular video sharing site, which, in principle, violates many principles that YouTube does — albeit on a smaller scale.  That site is iFilm.com

To prove that you can post copyrighted stuff to iFilm easily, Nick Denton added a clip of Oprah Winfrey’s daytime talkshow without any difficulty at all.

I’m in Nick Denton’s corner on this one: its lunacy to claim YouTube is doing Viacom wrong, when one of its own is just as guilty.