Viacom triggers spat with own talent over YouTube

Perez Hilton, the celeb-blogger has a show called What Perez Sez on Viacom-owned VH1. Why is that the lead line? Well, the (very) anti-YouTube conglomerate issued several DMCA takedown notices for three videos over the past year and half, according to TVWeek. After the third such notice, YouTube suspended Hilton’s account. Hilton had his lawyers contacted Viacom and asked them to resicnd the notices. Hilton says the company did that - and he had his account reinstated. But the blogger doesn’t like the way he was treated by YouTube, and has entertained a flurry of offers from video services.

For now, he’s going with Twistage - a private label video service that allows Hilton to keep the revenue generated by his videos. He says he only generated $5,000 on 25 million YouTube video views.

2 comments December 29th, 2007

Girl sings about Digg, gets dugg, talks to label

A girl who wrote and preformed a song about Digg has now been approached about a record contract, according to TechCrunch. Kina Grannis put her performance of “Gotta Digg” on YouTube - and not surprisingly - saw a huge number of diggs on Digg. She’s also trying to win a contest to get a music video played during the telecast of the Super Bowl.

From the lyrics - you can tell Grannis has Digg’s number:

“I always digg up Apple and I bury Microsoft. ”
“When I see those stories about Senator Ron Paul, I don’t even RTFA, I just digg them all”
“I know Digg isn’t perfect, but be thankful for what we’ve got. Just like daddy always said, at least it’s not Slashdot.”

3 comments December 29th, 2007