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Forget Kanye & Taylor, the real battle is YouTube vs. Viacom
By AprillBrandon in Pop Goes the Culture
September 14, 2009

Regardless of whether or not you watched the VMA's last night, you probably already know what happened. You couldn't update a status or throw a tweet out there in cyberspace without being bombarded with messages such as:

"OMG, can't believe what Kayne did!"

"Epic fail, Kanye!"

"Eating tacos and feeling bad for Taylor Swift. Wishing I had some hot sauce."

Now, first of all, it should come as no surprise what Kayne West did at the awards ceremony. This is the same dude that compared himself to Jesus, folks.

But for those of you still living wireless-less (all three of you...hi grandma!) let me recap. Taylor Swift won an award and Kayne interrupted her acceptance speech, basically stealing the mic and saying it should have been Beyonce who won the award.

What a sweetie, eh?

But the most interesting part of this story, in my opinion, is that Viacom has been fighting tooth and nail to keep that infamous clip off of YouTube.

According to the New York Times, the clip garnered half a million hits on YouTube within 20 minutes. Since then, the parent company of MTV has been playing "a game of media whack-a-mole, flagging illicit copies of the videos almost as soon as they appeared."

Apparently, (surprise, surprise) MTV and Viacom want people to go to their Web site to watch the clip.

Luckily, they've made it pretty easy to find the clip and even embed it...

MTV Shows

But don't they know that YouTube is the virtual version of going to the cool kid's house to find out all the latest gossip? Sure, you could get bits and pieces of gossip from the original sources, going from person to person, but isn't it much more fun to get it all in one place?

Sorry Viacom, but I think you're fighting a losing battle. YouTube is the ultimate online cool kid. And you're like an annoying parent who keeps coming up with excuses to come into the basement when we have friends over.