Viacom Sues YouTube For Copyright Infringement

Viacom Media is to sue search engine giant Google and its website YouTube for $1 billion, for illegal use of its shows.

Viacom says that around 160,000 unauthorised clips have been uploaded to the video-sharing website YouTube and have been seen more than 1.5 billion times, meaning that the company has been deprived of advertising revenue.

In a statement, Viacom said: “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.

“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.”

In response, a Google spokesman said: “We have not received the lawsuit but are confident that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders and believe the courts will agree.

“YouTube is great for users and offers real opportunities to rights holders: the opportunity to interact with users; to promote their content to a young and growing audience; and to tap into the online advertising market.

“We will certainly not let this suit become a distraction to the continuing growth and strong performance of YouTube and its ability to attract more users, more traffic and build a stronger community.”

At the beginning of March, YouTube struck a deal with the BBC to create branded BBC channels on the video-sharing site, operating under separate BBC and BBC Worldwide agreements (see BBC Does Deal With YouTube).

Viacom: 020 7478 5240 www.viacom.com