Is Mika Salmi, behind Viacom's beef with Youtube?

Going their own way since parent company Viacom yanked all its content of Youtube's tubes, MTV digital prexy Mike Salmi is already whoring MTV's websites by letting users have their way with content. Makes us wonder if Mika is the brains behind Viacom's recent outburst with Youtube. Mika, lets hope this one hits big with MTVers and other entertainment content addicts, because if not, its only a matter of time before you kiss and make up with Chad Hurley. “We need to open up our Web sites and content both for consumers and for other companies,” Mika Salmi, MTV Networks’ president of global digital media, told Reuters, which said the move was “part of a strategy to bring Viacom’s Web sites up to ‘Web 2.0’ standards.” If so, it is a new strategy. For most of its history, the MTV sites have been anything but open. Until recently, clips from Comedy Central were available only to those using the Internet Explorer browser, and Macintosh users who wanted to watch a video on VH1’s VSpot broadband service were out of luck. And even now, trying to find a clip from, say, “The Daily Show” often requires an infuriating amount of searching and drilling down through several clicks. And forget about sending your friend a link directly to the video — it cannot be done. Sharing the Wealth at MTV [NYT]