As Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube inches through the US judicial system, YouTube’s chief counsel, Zahavah Levine, posted a bombshell to the company’s weblog: writing after the release of previously sealed documents, he said that even as Viacom was suing YouTube for allowing infringing copies of its content to be posted by YouTube users, Viacom was also using at least 18 marketing agencies to secretly upload its videos to YouTube.It even had the agencies “rough up” the clips before uploading, wrote Levine, so that they’d appear to be illegitimate, smuggled copies, imbued with forbidden sexiness. He claimed that in a moment of Pythonesque petard-hoisting, Viacom even sent copyright complaints to YouTube over some of these videos, which it subsequently followed up with sheepish retractions when it became clear that the infringer in question was another arm of Viacom.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/may/04/viacom-youtube