Lawsuit frenzy: Viacom sues Google, YouTube for $1b!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 13 March 2007 20:31

Your IT - Home IT

Predictions that Google’s $1.65b purchase of YouTube would open the floodgates to massive copyright violation lawsuits and Google’s ultra-deep pockets are seemingly coming true with Viacom suing for a cool $1 billion dollars.

Watch out YouTube and Google, Viacom (the owner of MTV, Paramount and Nickelodeon) has broadcast the fact it thinks you’ve violated its copyrights and they want $1 billion in damages.

YouTube, famous for offering a huge library of video clips, with both amateur ‘funniest home videos’ type clips and parts of commercial clips taken from TV shows and movies, is equally well known for the slogan ‘broadcast yourself’.

The problem is, plenty of YouTube’s users have decided to broadcast someone else’s copyright video, and while this has led to over 100 million videos watched a day by YouTube’s users, somewhat reminiscent of the massive download frenzy seen with copyright violators Napster and Kazaa, it has also seriously irked some of the world’s major content houses.

While some companies, such as CBS and the BBC have decided YouTube is far too important to ignore, or sue, and have decided to work with them instead, Viacom has decided that enough is enough and it’s time to give the lawyers one of the biggest paydays they’re likely to see in 2007.

The lawsuit was actioned in New York’s Federal Court, with Viacom saying in a statement that YouTube and Google have engaged in alleged ‘massive intentional’ copyright infringement. This is because negotiations between the two sides have been painful and ultimately not fruitful, despite YouTube having agreed to removed 100,000 Viacom owned clips.

Part of the problem seems to be that YouTube cannot effectively control the material that is being uploaded to their site, despite work on a filtering system to weed out copyright material as soon as it is uploaded. Neither Google nor YouTube have yet responded to the Viacom lawsuit.

Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, is reported to have said last week that media companies would be ‘forced to work with and in the Internet’, although given Viacom’s lawsuit, not all media companies believe this means having to work with Google and YouTube, with Viacom only recently doing a massive deal with IPTV company Joost to broadcast a broad selection of its content on the Joost Internet TV network.

It’s also not the first lawsuit that Google and YouTube have had to face, with News Corporation and Mark Cuban’s film distribution company suing Google so they would be forced to identify users who uploaded video clips to both YouTube and Google Video without the required permission.

The battleground for domination in the Internet TV space is turning out to be very fierce indeed, with free-to-air/cable/satellite TV operators, games console makers, peer-to-peer web TV providers and companies like Apple with iTunes and Apple TV all fighting to be the providers of TV and video into homes across the globe.

There’s a revolution underway, folks, and there’ll certainly be no quick resolution to this video war of the worlds. Grab a drink and some popcorn and prepare for a must-see TV battle of unprecedented proportions – it’s going to be quite a show!