—Viacom execs, who missed out on MySpace (NYSE: NWS) the year before, are beyond keen to get YouTube. Not surprisingly, Google highlights gthe most, um, exuberant parts: MTVN CEO Judy McGrath telling M&A execs: “Help us get YouTube. We cannot see it go to Fox/NBC” and “I want to own YouTube. I think it’s critical asnd if it goes to a competitior!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Even if we have to buy it with a partner to keep it below the line.” Then-Viacom CEO Tom Freston:“If we get UTube… I wanna run it.” McGrath: “You’ll have to kill me to get to it first.”

The e-mail that starts that last exchange between Freston and McGrath is more about Viacom than YouTube. “We know what to do. I know this SUCKS its MADDENING that the revenue isn’t there when the content is…but we will fix it and get the stock back up. ‘Accretive’ digital acquisitions and a big idea or two. Fast.” Less than two months later he was out as CEO. [Despite the effusive nature of much of the correspondence about buying YouTube, it turned out to be much ado about not a lot. Viacom’s take: “No due diligence was performed, no price was determined, and no offer was ever made.” No surprise, the media conglom would rather the attention be on the actual purchaser and what it considers to be infringing behavior. That doesn’t erase these messages or the obvious interest.]

— Google highlights the tolerant attitude of South Park‘s creators when it comes to piracy—but omits warnings on the same site that downloading episodes isn’t legal. The quote they pull from an unofficial South Park FAQ: “Matt and Trey do not mind when fans download their episodes off the Internet; they feel that it’s good when people watch the show no matter how they do it.” That foolows one from the same exhibit explaining why the site doesn’t offer full episodes: “Comedy Central wants you to actually tune in to see the shows, that’s why we only give clips. There are plenty of other fine places where you can download episodes in full. Kazza.com, Limewire.com, or Morpheus.com.” (For a sign of how times have changed, here’s a legal link to a full episode on the official South Park Studios site.)

A few weeks later, the FAQ added another layer: “No, we never said the creators give people permission to download. We have only ever said that Matt and Trey don’t care, that doesn’t mean you have permission. It is NOT legal to download episodes of South Park, and you can have legal actions made towards you if Comedy Central thinks it is necessary.” [As should be very clear from this last message, Viacom didn’t condone or encourage the episodes being available on those sites. Viacom points out that YouTube didn’t exist when these posts were made. No, but YouTube wasn’t the first video outlet to host content so it’s not out of place to look at various attitudes towards piracy of people connected with the company.]

Viacom offers a point-by-point retort to Google’s claims about its actions and a statement from Fricklas about Google’s actions.