The war begins! Viacom file a $1 billion law suit against google for infingement of its copyrights through it Youtube property. Viacom also go one step further and accuse Youtube of deliberately avoiding doing anything to stop copyright infringement by its users in an attempt to earn revenues. Should be very interesting to see how this one pans out as it could set a precedent for the whole online video industry and if Viacom are successful everyone else will be sure to follow suit!
Viacom Slaps Google with $1B YouTube Lawsuit
Accusing YouTube of “massive intentional copyright infringement,” media giant Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit Tuesday against the video site and its parent Google, CNET reports. Some 160,000 clips of Viacom programming have been illegally available on YouTube and have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times, Viacom said. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and also seeks an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement.”YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google. Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws,” Viacom said in a statement.”In fact, YouTube’s strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden – and high cost – of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement,” Viacom said in a statement.