Viacom Sues Google For US$1bn

by Glen Shapiro, Lawandtax-News.com, New York

14 March 2007

After months of unsuccessful negotiations, US media giant Viacom yesterday filed suit against Google and its subsidiary YouTube, seeking more than US$1bn in damages for alleged copyright infringement.

The suit was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, and also requests an injunction to prevent further copyright infringement by Google and YouTube.

Viacom, which owns a number of cable networks, says that Google is hiding behind its professed policy of removing offending video clips on demand, knowling full well that users will quickly re-post any clip that is removed.

Viacom issued a statement which ran partially as follows:

"Defendants know and intend that a substantial amount of the content on the YouTube site consists of unlicensed infringing copies of copyrighted works and have done little or nothing to prevent this massive infringement. To the contrary, the availability on the YouTube site of a vast library of the copyrighted works of Plaintiffs and others is the cornerstone of Defendants' business plan. YouTube deliberately built up a library of infringing works to draw traffic to the YouTube site, enabling it to gain a commanding market share, earn significant revenues, and increase its enterprise value."

Google said that it had not yet received details of the lawsuit, but said it was confident that YouTube had respected the legal rights of copyright holders.

Analysts say that the lawsuit is just another gambit in the negotiations between the two companies, and expect a settlement to be reached. Although at first sight it appears that YouTube, or at least its users, are infringing copyright, it is thought that the media companies don't necessarily mind all that much because of the immense publicity benefits. They would far prefer to reach a revenue-sharing deal and don't really intend to destroy the YouTube model outright.

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