Viacom, owner of MTV, has filed a $1 billion (£520 million) lawsuit against Google concerning the activities of its video-sharing website, YouTube.
Viacom has accused Google of “massive intentional copyright infringement” on YouTube, which the search engine giant bought last year for $1.65bn (see
Google Acquires YouTube For $1.65 Billion).
Viacom claims that around 160,000 unauthorised clips have been uploaded to YouTube and been seen more than 1.5 billion times, depriving the company 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.”
Viacom added: “After a great deal of unproductive negotiation, and remedial efforts by ourselves and other copyright holders, YouTube continues in its unlawful business model. Therefore, we must turn to the courts to prevent Google and YouTube from continuing to steal value from artists and to obtain compensation for the significant damage they have caused.”
In response, a Google spokesman was quoted by the BBC as saying: “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 end of February, Viacom announced that its full year 2006 revenues rose 19% from $9.61 billion in 2005 to $11.7 billion (see Viacom Records Revenue Increase).
Related Links
