NBey6's Blog

"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts."

 - Clarence Shepard Day -

2009-2010 Regular Season

As of 3-22-10

Eastern Conference

EASTERN W L PCT GB HOME ROAD DIV CONF PF PA DIFF STRK L10

1 y - Cleveland 56 15 .789 - 31-4 25-11 11-2 35-9 102.2 94.8 +7.5 Won 7 9-1 

2 x - Orlando 49 21 .700 6 ½ 28-7 21-14 9-5 33-12 102.0 95.1 +6.9 Won 2 9-1

3 Boston 45 24 .652 10 21-12 24-12 12-2 30-15 98.8 94.1 +4.7 Won 4 7-3

4 Atlanta 45 24 .652 10 28-7 17-17 6-7 25-15 102.5 97.7 +4.8 Won 2 7-3

5 Milwaukee 38 30 .559 16 ½ 23-9 15-21 9-5 26-15 98.1 96.4 +1.8 Won 2 8-2

6 Miami 36 34 .514 19 ½ 21-16 15-18 9-7 22-19 96.0 94.9 +1.0 Won 1 7-3

7 Charlotte 35 34 .507 20 25-8 10-26 7-6 20-22 94.6 93.6 +1.0 Lost 2 7-3

8 Toronto 34 34 .500 20 ½ 23-11 11-23 9-4 25-18 103.8 105.8 -2.0 Won 1 3-7

 

• z - Clinched Conference
• y - Clinched Division
• x - Clinched Playoff Berth

 

Western Conference

WESTERN W L PCT GB HOME ROAD DIV CONF PF PA DIFF STRK L10

1 x - LA Lakers 52 18 .743 - 32-5 20-13 12-2 30-11 102.9 96.9 +6.0 Won 6 7-3

 2 Denver 47 23 .671 5 30-6 17-17 10-4 29-15 107.5 102.3 +5.2 Lost 1 8-2

3 Dallas 46 23 .667 5 ½ 24-11 22-12 7-5 24-16 101.7 99.6 +2.0 Lost 1 8-2

4 Utah 45 25 .643 7 28-8 17-17 7-8 27-18 103.6 98.0 +5.6 Won 1 7-3

5 Phoenix 44 26 .629 8 28-9 16-17 11-4 29-16 109.8 105.8 +4.0 Won 4 7-3

6 Oklahoma City 42 26 .618 9 22-11 20-15 8-3 22-18 100.2 96.9 +3.3 Lost 1 7-3

7 San Antonio 41 27 .603 10 25-10 16-17 8-5 25-17 101.4 96.6 +4.9 Lost 1 7-3

8 Portland 42 29 .592 10 ½ 23-13 19-16 6-7 26-16 97.9 94.9 +3.0 Lost 1 8-2

• z - Clinched Conference
• y - Clinched Division
• x - Clinched Playoff Berth

Well, this tennis tournament starts on 3-22-10 and quite a few of my favorites will be in the tourney, but 3 key people I wanted to see had to withdraw due to injuries, Serena Williams, Juan-Martin del Potro and Maria Sharapova. Looks like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Venus Williams, among others, will have to hold my attention at this tournament, this year.

   

8 very rare (and very expensive) video games

By Rob Lammle, Mental Floss

March 20, 2010 11:23 a.m. EDT

• Old video games can be worth tens of thousands of dollars
• Stadium Events can sell for $13,000 -- $41,300; $10,000 for the box alone
• Nintendo Campus Challenge (NES) can get between $14,000 -- 20,100

(Mental Floss) -- If you've ever collected baseball cards, comic books, stamps, or maybe those limited edition commemorative plates, you understand the concept of the "Holy Grail" item.

 

It's that last, hard-to-find, incredibly rare, usually expensive piece that you have to have before you can officially say your collection is complete. If you're a collector of vintage home video game cartridges (or "carts"), sometimes that can mean paying a pretty penny for the pièce de résistance.

 

1. Stadium Events (Nintendo Entertainment System)
Price Range: $13,000 -- $41,300; $10,000 for the box alone

 

Why So Expensive?: Stadium Events was released by Bandai in 1987 as one of the few games available in America that was made for the company's Family Fun Fitness mat, a soft, plastic controller you walked, ran, and jumped on to make the characters move.

 

Nintendo bought the rights to the game and the Fitness mat in 1988 and re-released them as World Class Track Meet and the Power Pad controller. To avoid consumer confusion, Nintendo pulled all copies of Stadium Events from shelves and had them destroyed, but not before approximately 200 carts had already been sold. Of those 200, collectors believe that only 10 to 20 complete copies of the game exist today, making them a real rarity.

 

Stadium Events recently made headlines with two high-profile eBay sales. A North Carolina woman was cleaning out her garage and found an old Nintendo and a handful of games, including Stadium Events. She put them up on eBay without high expectations and was amazed to see the bids steadily climb up to $13,105.

 

While the game itself is valuable, the winning bidder was most interested in the cardboard box it came in. Since most kids threw the box away after tearing open a new game, intact boxes for any game are really hard to come by, but especially so for Stadium Events. Empty Stadium Event boxes have been known to sell for $10,000 alone.

 

After hearing of the success of this eBay seller, a man in Kansas dug up a factory-sealed copy of the game that he thought was worthless. However, his game became only the second known sealed copy in existence. He'd purchased the game in 1987, but could never find the Fitness mat to go with it. It was still sealed because he'd meant to return it. When his eBay auction ended on February 26, 2010, the game sold for an amazing $41,300.

 

The same game repackaged by Nintendo, World Class Track Meet, generally sells for less than $3 on eBay.

 

Mental Floss: 6 people who accidentally found a fortune

 

2. 1990 Nintendo World Championships (NES)
Price Range: Gray: $4,000 -- $6,100; Gold: $15,000 -- $21,000

 

Why So Expensive?: In 1990, Nintendo held a 30-city gaming tournament to find the best player in the world. Players had to get the best score in demo versions of three games -- Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer, and Tetris -- all within a six-minute time limit.

 

At the end of each city's tournament, the winners of each of three age groups were given special gray Championship cartridges exactly like those used in the competition, which means only 90 of these cartridges were distributed. The gold version was sent out to those who won a promotional contest in the pages of Nintendo Power magazine. Only 26 gold games were produced, so they're especially hard to find and command a higher price today.

 

3. Nintendo Campus Challenge (NES)
Price Range: $14,000 -- $20,100

 

Why So Expensive?: In the early 1990s, Nintendo held competitions on college campuses and at popular Spring Break destinations. Like the World Championships, players had six minutes to play for high scores on demo versions of Super Mario Bros. 3, PinBot, and Dr. Mario.

 

Most copies of the game were destroyed after the competition ended, but one Nintendo employee kept his cart and sold it to Rob Walters at a garage sale in 2006.

 

This garage sale is legendary among retrogamers, as Rob bought all kinds of NES Holy Grails for only $1,000. By the time he re-sold everything, he'd made 50 times that. Part of that $50,000 was the Campus Challenge cartridge, which went for $14,000. Shortly after, the buyer of the cart turned around and sold it on eBay for $20,100. As far as anyone knows, it's the only copy of the game in the world.

 

4. Atlantis II (Atari 2600)
Price Range: $5,000 -- $6,000

 

Why So Expensive?: It's never mentioned in the same breath as Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, but Atlantis was a pretty popular game in 1982. The gameplay was similar to Missile Command, with players defending their base from overhead attack by enemy ships. The developer held a tournament called Destination Atlantis, where players were invited to send in photos of their TV screens displaying their high scores. The best players were then sent Atlantis II, a special edition of the game that featured faster enemy ships worth fewer points, making it harder to get a high score, but easier to determine the true champions.

 

Because this version was not mass produced, its pretty rare today. But if you find a copy of the original Atlantis at a garage sale, it might be a good idea to pick it up anyway. The competition cart had the exact same colorful label of the regular Atlantis, but had a small, white sticker slapped on the front that read "Atlantis II." The label was easily peeled off, so a quick Google search will show you how to determine if you bought a $3 Atari game or a $6,000 one.

 

Mental Floss: 8 video game lawsuits

 

5. Air Raid (Atari 2600)
Price Range: $1,000 -- $3,000

 

Why So Expensive?: Air Raid is a bit of an enigma for Atari fans. Some say it was the one and only game produced by a company called "Menavision" (or perhaps "Menovision"). The game is so shrouded in mystery, it can't even be verified that "Air Raid" is its official title -- there's no name on the label.

 

The name was based on the gameplay, which is similar to Atlantis and Missile Command, and by the picture on the label of a city being attacked by flying saucers, jets, and helicopters.

 

This strange cartridge appeared around 1984 in a bright blue "T-handle" casing that is very different from the standard, square, black Atari carts sold in North America, but is similar in style to those sold in Brazil. Furthermore, while a few second-hand copies have been sold, no one can ever say they were the original owner. The mystery, as well as the fact there are only 12 known copies, make it a must-have for serious Atari collectors.

 

6. Star Wars Ewok Adventure (Atari 2600)
Price: $1,680

 

Why So Expensive?: Advertised in Parker Brothers' 1983 retail catalog as Revenge of the Jedi: Game I but affectionately known as Ewok Adventure, the cart became legendary for never being sold. In the game, players took control of an Ewok and flew a hang glider over the forest moon of Endor in an attempt to blow up an Imperial base. You could avoid or kill enemy Stormtroopers, Speeder Bikes, or Imperial AT-ST Walkers, or you could instead commandeer these vehicles to take out the base.

 

The game was shot down by Parker Brothers' marketing department, which felt the controls were too hard to master, so it was never produced. The game's designer, Larry Gelberg, gave the one and only known prototype copy to a friend's son, who later sold it for $1680.

 

Mental Floss: Cheetos, lip balm and other weird brand extensions

 

7. Kizuna Encounter (Neo Geo)
Price Range: $12,000 -- $13,500

 

Why So Expensive?: One of the main games that all Neo Geo fanatics are looking for is a particular version of Kizuna Encounter, a 1996 fighting game similar to Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter. The game itself has received solid reviews, but isn't groundbreaking by any means.

 

However, it was produced in such small quantities for the European market that collectors speculate fewer than 15 copies were made. The Japanese version, which is exactly the same except for different packaging, is fairly common and sells for about $50.

 

8. Ultimate 11 (Neo Geo)
Price Range: $8,000 -- $10,000

 

Why So Expensive?: Ultimate 11 was the final game in the Super Sidekicks series, a popular franchise of soccer games that sold very well. For some reason, though, Ultimate 11 was not produced in large quantities, and there are now fewer than 10 known copies in existence. That kind of rarity makes it a must-have for collectors.

 

In late 2009, a private sale was reportedly made between two members of the collectors' forums at neo-geo.com. The buyer paid an astonishing $55,000 to acquire both Kizuna Encounter and Ultimate 11. The original owner purchased the games around 10 years ago, when Kizuna was selling for $500 and Ultimate for $400. The new owner has said he will not sell them, even if he were offered $100,000.

Both Draws - Straight Long Shots

** until 3-31-10 **

137, 317, 597, 687, 867, 957, 777

Midday & Evening

*** until 3-24-10 ***

5410, 5411, 5412, 5413, 5414, 5415, 5416, 5417, 5418, 5419

4970, 4971, 4972, 4973, 4974, 4975, 4976, 4977, 4978, 4979

7410, 7411, 7412, 7413, 7414, 7415, 7416, 7417, 7418, 7419

3470, 3471, 3472, 3473, 3474, 3475, 3476, 3477, 3478, 3479

Midday & Evening

** until 3-24-10 **

1230, 1231, 1232, 1233, 1234, 1235, 1236, 1237, 1238, 1239

7100, 7101, 7102, 7103, 7104, 7105, 7106, 7107, 7108, 7109

1530, 1531, 1532, 1533, 1534, 1535, 1536, 1537, 1538, 1539

9100, 9101, 9102, 9103, 9104, 9105, 9106, 9107, 9108, 9109

Midday & Evening

** until 3-24-10 **

430, 134, 342, 435, 438, 603, 316, 362, 635

683, 073, 713, 327, 753, 378, 390, 193, 923

593, 893, 071, 047, 607, 087, 907, 127, 247

627, 782, 792, 317, 734, 367, 387, 937, 741

754, 657, 587, 579, 000, 111, 444, 555, 777

  

Bracket buster: Northern Iowa stuns No. 1 Kansas

By JOHN MARSHALL, AP Basketball Writer

John Marshall, Ap Basketball Writer

37 mins ago

OKLAHOMA CITY – Leading by one against the colossus of the bracket, Ali Farokhmanesh stood at the 3-point line, no one around. The prudent play? Pull it out, burn some clock.

Not a chance.

Taking his shot at history, Farokhmanesh let fly from the wing.

Swish!

The biggest upset in a tournament full of them was done. Northern Iowa had taken down mighty Kansas.

Playing with poise down the stretch and getting another big 3-pointer from Farokhmanesh, Northern Iowa pulled off one of the biggest NCAA upsets in years by knocking No. 1 overall seed Kansas from the bracket with a program-defining 69-67 win on Saturday.

"If anybody's going to shoot that shot, I want it to be Ali," Northern Iowa's Jake Koch said.

This year's NCAA tournament has been defined by its upsets. Eight double-digit seeds moved through the bracket in the first round. No. 10 Saint Mary's beat Villanova on Saturday and No. 11 Washington shoved aside New Mexico.

This was the biggest shocker of all.

Winning the tempo tug-of-war, ninth-seeded Northern Iowa (30-4) grounded the high-flying Jayhawks with in-their-jersey defense, then withstood a furious rally to become the first team to beat a No. 1 seed in the second round since UAB and Alabama did it to Kentucky and Stanford in 2004.

Farokhmanesh, Northern Iowa's first-round hero, had the biggest play of all.

With Kansas charging and its fans roaring, the fearless son of an Iranian Olympic volleyball player caught the ball on the wing after the Panthers had broken Kansas' press. The shot clock still in the 30s, he hesitated for just an instant, then cast his bracket-busting shot with 34 seconds left on the game clock.

Trailing 66-62, Kansas had one last chance, but Tyrel Reed was called for an offensive foul and Farokhmanesh sealed it with two free throws with 5 seconds left, sending the Panthers to the round of 16 for the first time.

Next up is the Michigan State-Maryland winner in St. Louis — and another chance at history.

"This team has done such a great job of turning the page to what's next, and this would be the biggest challenge of the year," Northern Iowa coach Ben Jacobson said. "A lot of positive things have happened because of the way these guys played.

Kansas (33-3) fell behind early and came up just short on one of its anticipated runs, ending a season that started with national-title aspirations on another disappointing NCAA loss to a mid-major.

The Jayhawks trailed by as many as 12 points and used defense to pull within one with 44 seconds left. But they let Farokhmanesh sneak behind them for the deciding 3 to go down for the mid-major count like they did to Bradley in 2006 and Bucknell the year before, also in Oklahoma City.

Cole Aldrich had 13 points and 10 rebounds, Marcus Morris added 16 points and Sherron Collins ended his stellar KU career with 10 points on 4-of-15 shooting.

"Obviously, everybody is disappointed on our team," Aldrich said. "To work so hard and to go through so much adversity ... it's disappointing that we couldn't have let Sherron go out in a better way."

The post-game celebration told the story.

Farokhmanesh, who finished with 16 points, jumped into a huddle of teammates, and Koch embraced older brother Adam to a chant of "U-N-I!" At the other end, Jayhawks Morris and redshirt senior Mario Little crumbled to the floor, tears streaming down their faces when they finally rose.

Yes, this was monumental.

"We never doubted we could play with them at all," senior Adam Koch said.

Kansas sneaked by Lehigh in the first round, using a spirit-crushing run to turn a scare into a 16-point win.

Northern Iowa had a fight all the way through its three-point win over UNLV in the opener, breaking a 20-year NCAA winless drought on Farokhmanesh's 25-footer with 4.9 seconds left.

This game was like opposite poles of two magnets; One of the nation's highest-scoring teams against Northern Iowa's stuck-in-the-mud mentality.

The Panthers faced the tougher task.

They had never played a No. 1-ranked team and no one from their conference had beaten one since 1962. UNI also seemed to be overmatched against KU's lineup of pros-in-waiting. When asked if any of their players could start for Kansas, Farokhmanesh and Adam Koch gave an uncomfortable laugh.

The thing about the Panthers is they know defensive positioning as well as any team in the country, moving in a symphonic dance of denial. Northern Iowa has become the most consistent team in its state, too, reaching the NCAA tournament five of the past seven years, good enough that Kansas coach Bill Self said there's no way Cinderella's shoe fits anymore.

He was right.

UNI went right at the Jayhawks, opening with a 10-2 run that had Self burning an early timeout against a mid-major for the second straight game.

The Panthers kept attacking, leading all but 56 seconds of the first half, by as much as eight. Farokhmanesh was at his quick-shooting best, hitting all four of his shots — three 3s — for 11 points to put UNI in the upset position, up 36-28 at halftime.

"There were some things that happened during the game that I felt like wasn't poor play by us, more so Northern Iowa making plays," Kansas coach Bill Self said.

The Panthers kept it up.

Northern Iowa kept forcing Kansas into mistakes, didn't stop making shots and built the lead to 47-35 with 12 1/2 minutes left.

That's when Kansas starting inching back.

Turning up their defensive pressure, the Jayhawks clipped the lead down to 56-53 with just 4 1/2 minutes left as their fans made the Ford Center feel like Allen Fieldhouse.

The Panthers didn't blink, answering every challenge for the monster upset.

"We knew they were going to turn up the pressure," Adam Koch said. "In this kind of environment, where this could be your last game, you're going to come at it with everything."

"Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in this life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from."

- Elisabeth KuBler-Ross -

Updated: March 19, 2010, 3:15 PM ET

Tyler quits Maccabi with 5 weeks left

ESPN.com news services

JERUSALEM -- Former U.S. high school basketball star Jeremy Tyler quit Israeli team Maccabi Haifa and returned home Friday, cutting short a disappointing first pro season.

The 18-year-old Tyler arrived in Israel on a wave of publicity in August after deciding to skip his senior year at San Diego High School to gain professional experience.

 

However, his time in Israel was fraught with problems, and he left five weeks before the end of the season.

"Due to personal matters, Jeremy chose to leave the team on his own will on March 18 and return home to San Diego," Maccabi Haifa owner Jeffrey Rosen said in a statement. "We wish Jeremy all the best."

In the 10 games Tyler played for Haifa, the 6-foot-11 power forward averaged only 2.1 points and 1.9 rebounds in 7.6 minutes. Tyler, who reportedly earned a $140,000 salary, found it hard to adapt to the pro game and couldn't find a place in Maccabi Haifa's starting lineup.

Tyler's agent said he wasn't aware of his client's plans to leave the team.

"I'm as surprised as you are. We had no idea he was coming home," Makhtar Ndiaye of the Wasserman Media Group told ESPN's William Weinbaum. "I'm speechless at this point and look forward to speaking with Jeremy. A contract, a learning process -- things weren't great -- but it was part of growing up. I'm disappointed and frustrated."

Tyler's frustration was evident. Last month, he walked out on the team at halftime to protest not getting more minutes. For the last three games, he sat on the bench not wearing a uniform after being left off the Haifa squad.

Ndiaye said he spoke to Tyler earlier this week and "everything was cool."

"The kid decided on his own," Ndiaye said. "We did everything humanly possible to make it a success story for him and his family."

Sonny Vaccaro, an adviser to Tyler and his family, told ESPN the season in Israel wasn't a negative experience despite how it ended.

 

"Nothing was lost here -- he went, it was hard, it was eight months," Vaccaro said. "It would've been beautiful, utopia, if he had played and helped his team win a championship."

Vaccaro said Brandon Jennings, a star rookie for the Milwaukee Bucks, didn't show very much in his stint overseas, either.

"Five or six NBA scouts have told me recently to just have Jeremy come home and start practicing, that the experience in Israel is not detrimental to his future," Vaccaro said.

Vaccaro, who said Tyler would be able to sign another deal to play somewhere in August, added there's another year before Tyler would be eligible for the NBA draft, and that he didn't understand "everyone's rush to judge him."

"He's got talent and is not a bad kid," Vaccaro said.

As for the implications of the Tyler episode for the NBA's ban on high schoolers playing in the league, Vaccaro said: "If that option were allowed, he could have gone to the NBA [in tryouts] and seen if he could make it.

"It is a ridiculous system where that can't happen, where a kid can't try, be told he's not good enough and then go back to school, retaining amateur status. This could've been avoided."

Midday 3-19-10 Evening

** until 3-22-10 **

015 016 019 024 025 028 029 034 037 038 046 047 056 069 078 079 123 124 127 128 136 137 145 146 159 168 169 178 235 236 245 249 258 259 267 268 289 348 349 357 358 367 379 389 456 457 469 478 479 568 569 578 789 001 002 006 007 011 114 115 118 119 223 226 227 033 133 334 335 339 244 344 447 448 055 155 556 559 366 466 667 668 177 277 577 677 088 388 488 889 199 299 699 799 222 555 888

 

 Midday 3-19-10 Evening

**until 3-22-10 **

204, 124, 249, 034, 134, 943, 054, 145, 549, 406

146, 649, 047, 147, 974, 480, 148, 489, 243, 524

264, 247, 284, 543, 346, 743, 438, 564, 754, 458

674, 684, 784, 000, 333, 444, 555, 666, 777, 888

Viacom, YouTube air dirty laundry in legal battle

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer

Michael Liedtke, Ap Technology Writer

1 hr 52 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO – Viacom Inc. and Google Inc.'s YouTube site began airing each other's dirty laundry Thursday, providing a tantalizing peek at the wheeling and dealing that triggered a bitter battle over the copyright laws governing the Internet.

The previously confidential information came out as part of the evidence in a copyright lawsuit that Viacom filed against YouTube in 2007 for alleged copyright infringement of "The Colbert Report," "The Daily Show" and other shows.

The sensitive documents were unsealed because Viacom and YouTube are both trying to persuade U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton to decide the case without a trial.

Both YouTube and Viacom are getting muddied in the process.

Internal YouTube e-mails depict at least one of the company's founders as a video pirate and suggest the Web site's employees were more interested in getting rich quick than adhering to copyright laws.

Other records show Viacom wanted to buy YouTube at least seven months before it filed its lawsuit and often used the Web site to promote the shows on its cable TV programming.

Google bought YouTube for $1.76 billion in November 2006, but not before Viacom made a last-ditch effort to persuade Google to team up in a joint bid for the Web's leading video site, according to the court documents. A few months later, Google offered to pay Viacom $590 million for licensing rights to video, according to the records.

Viacom, the owner of Paramount Pictures and cable TV channels that include Comedy Central, instead sued Google and YouTube in a complaint seeking more than $1 billion in damages.

The media company alleges that YouTube allowed copyright-protected clips to appear on its Web site in its early days to attract a bigger audience. YouTube maintains it has always obeyed online copyright laws, which generally protect service providers from copyright claims as long as they didn't post the infringing material themselves and promptly remove it when notified about a violation.

But an e-mail exchange among YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim showed there were in-house copyright abuses.

"Jawed, please stop putting stolen videos on the site," Chen wrote in the July 19, 2005, e-mail. "We're going to have a tough time defending the fact that we're not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we didn't put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it."

In a statement after the documents were unsealed, YouTube said Chen's e-mail was referring to some aviation videos that had been making the rounds on the Web. "The exchange has nothing to do with supposed piracy of media content," YouTube said.

Karim left YouTube before Google bought it in 2006. But he kept YouTube e-mail on his personal computer, enabling Viacom to obtain correspondence that Hurley had said he lost, according to court documents.

In a July 29, 2005 e-mail, Chen advised Hurley and Karim to "steal it!" in an apparent reference to an unidentified video clip, according to the court documents. After Hurley asked if he wanted to steal movies, Chen replied, "haha ya. Or something."

Hurley, though, brushed off the suggestion, saying he had bigger ambitions than other sites that depended on unauthorized video for traffic. "I would 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," Hurley wrote.

YouTube was still in a testing, or "beta," phase at the time Chen and Hurley wrote their e-mails. The site didn't drop the beta tag until December 2005 when the YouTube was processing about 6,000 video clips per day. It now accepts about 24 hours of video per minute and hosts more than 500 million videos, according to the court documents.

Google had its own copyright reservations about YouTube before it struck a deal. Internal documents obtained by Viacom quote Google executives describing YouTube as "a 'rogue enabler' of content theft" and warning the site "is completely sustained by pirated content."

Viacom was sizing up YouTube as a takeover target before it launched its legal attack against YouTube.

MTV Networks, the division overseeing Viacom's cable TV operations, made the case for a YouTube bid in a July 2006 presentation.

"We believe YouTube would make a transformative acquisition for MTV Networks/Viacom that would immediately make us the leading deliverer of video online," Viacom's review said.

Viacom also hailed YouTube as "the dominant platform" for Web video and worried that the site would end up being sold to News Corp.'s MySpace. The documents didn't mention how much Viacom might have been willing to pay for YouTube.

The presentation was drawn up by Adam Cahan, an MTV Networks executive vice president. Cahan had left Google earlier in 2006 to work for Viacom.

Just a few days before Google announced its YouTube deal, Cahan tried to persuade his old employer to make a joint bid. "The idea would be: Viacom and Google buy YouTube," Cahan wrote in an Oct. 6, 2006, e-mail to Susan Wojcicki, Google's vice president of product management and the sister-in-law of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

After Google announced it had struck a deal with YouTube on its own, Viacom employees continued to post a "boatload" of clips to the video site, according to a Viacom e-mail released Thursday.

Since Google's takeover, YouTube has struck licensing deals with many media companies, which now get a cut of revenue from ads shown on the video site.

YouTube won over much of the professional media by developing technology that automatically detects video and audio claimed by its copyright owners. It worked with another Silicon Valley firm, Audible Magic, on the audio detection.

 "To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often."

- Sir Winston Churchill -