Viacom Sues Google with $1B YouTube Lawsuit

[companyone]

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.

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[GAMEFINEST]

then every company in the world will sue google.....that is the dumbest thing i have heard today

 

[PRED]

we knew it was coming. the guys who sold must be pissing themselves!

 

[GAMEFINEST]

Google probably planned for this....and know how to deal with money hungry companys

 

[Rarethings]

we knew it was coming. the guys who sold must be pissing themselves!

I'd say more like laughing over a couple of ice cream sandwiches.

Viacom can sue the hell out of Youtube. The fact is that youtube complied with their every reuqest to remove the videos from their site. Policing every user is like policing the world. Does Viacom sue limewire over users posting free videos and even movies there? No, of course not.

This wouldn't have to do anything with the fact that Viacom is jealous over Youtube's position and clear dominance over Viacom's own online entertainment sector. Or the fact that Viacom just cut a deal with Joost. No, of course not. If I were google I would ban their content completely from all indexes and serps. Let them fend for themselves.

 

[PRED]

i'd still rather have the cash in the bank & leave google with the headache.
:uhoh:
mind you, those geeks probably don't know how to use the money, they're probably still living in a garage living on domino's pizzas! LOL :lol:

 

[GAMEFINEST]

i'd still rather have the cash in the bank & leave google with the headache.
:uhoh:
mind you, those geeks probably don't know how to use the money, they're probably still living in a garage living on domino's pizzas! LOL :lol:

i wouldnt mind being them......young and rich....and powerful.

 

[Steen]

then every company in the world will sue google.....that is the dumbest thing i have heard today

Interesting point of view.

 

[companyone]

Big companies take turns sueing each other for big bucks....and they ALL sue "domainers" just for small bucks and the fun of it...lol

Peace

 

[Focus]

I'm suing all of you for everything...but will settle for $100 paypal!

 

[whydna]

Why not? YouTube is hosting thousands upon thousands of copyrighted material, including movies, tv shows, and more without the permission of the author.

"These videos are uploaded by users! How can you expect YouTube.com staff to filter out all this material!?" you say? Well, that is Google / YouTube's problem... and if it can't be addressed then their is something wrong with their business model.

MegaUpload, RapidShare, and all those other copyright/warez infested sites should be hit with a big fat lawsuit as well IMO.

 

[Deleted member 4749]

The claim will probably suceed.

 

[dvestors]

This was bound to happen sooner or later. Napster only lasted so long. I don't think YouTube will meet the same fate though..since the big G owns it.

 

[Ian]

I think this matter might be settled outside the court room.

 

[MobileDesigner]

You wanna see how happy they look now?
This is this weeks magazine from Asahi that focuses on important people in the world. And here they are this week, the two must happiest men that were glad to sell at a time before this!

http://opendoors.asahi.com/data/image/00007977_c_r20070319.jpg

 

[Rascagua]

I think Viacom has every right to sue YouTube. And I hope they succeed.

The only way YouTube will take a video off the database is if a company claims copyright or whatever. That means that these companies have to waste time and money trying to remove these videos.

 

[MobileDesigner]

this is like shooting the messenger. Perhaps Viacom should just contact the people posting such content on youtube instead of making them responsible. Perhaps a new technology will come about which prevents the uploading of copyright material. naaaaaa.

 

[Rarethings]

The claim will probably suceed.

I doubt it.

Napster only lasted so long. I don't think YouTube will meet the same fate though..since the big G owns it.

Napster is not youtube.

 

[Creature]

Google must be seriously upsetting the US government by allowing propaganda videos to be posted on youtube by the opposition in Iraq. Strings will be pulled and Google will lose imo.

 

[kwok]

The most happy person who sees this is Bill Gates, IMO.