Google faces lawsuit over YouTube

Viacom is jumping on the anti-YouTube bandwagon. The company today filed a $1 billion lawsuit accusing the company of "massive intentional copyright infringement". The lawsuit is against both YouTube and parent company Google.

by Kristina Knight

Viacom said in the complaint, "YouTube appropriates the value of creative content on a massive scale for YouTube's benefit without payment or license. YouTube's brazen disregard of the intellectual-property laws fundamentally threatens not just plaintiffs but the economic underpinnings of one of the most important sectors of the United States economy."

There are roughly 160,000 Viacom clips available on YouTube. The clips are estimated to have been viewed at least one billion times. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the southern district of New York and seeks to prevent Google and YouTube from further copyright violations.

This isn't the first go-round between Viacom and YouTube. In February, Viacom demanded that YouTube immediately take 100,000 Viacom clips from their video sharing service. YouTube said the clips would be taken down, but Viacom is apparently tired of waiting for that to happen.

Google, also, has taken heat recently for copyright infringement. A Belgium court has ruled that Google's use of newspaper clips in their search results is a violation of the country's copyright infringement laws. The Belgium court ordered Google to pay and fine and remove the Belgian content links