Battle of the Giants as Viacom and Google Clash over Copyright
March 14th, 2007 by pamela
Viacom is suing Google over alleged breaches of copyright at its video sharing site YouTube, filing a $1 billion damages lawsuit and saying that the company has is guilty of ‘massive copyright infringement’.
In a statement, Viacom claims that YouTube’s business model “is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws,” a claim which Google denies.
Last week a Google spokesman responded to the growing anger among content distributors sayin: “The goal of search engines, and of products like Google Book Search and YouTube, is to help users find information from content producers of every size.”
“We do this by complying with international copyright laws, and the result has been more exposure and in many cases more revenue for authors, publishers and producers of content.”
Viacom is seeking more than $1` billion in damages as well as an injunction barring YouTube and Google from further copyright infringement. Viacom claims that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom’s programming have been easily available to view on YouTube and that these clips have been watched more than 1.5 billion times.
Viacom called YouTube; “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.
They have further accused YouTube of blatent disregard for copyright laws, saying: “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.”
Google and YouTube seem to be standing alone on this, as other major players press ahead with agreements which see their content legally distributed. Viacom is being joined by other media giants including NBC Universal, Walt Disney, Time Warner and News Corporation to protest against Google’s misuse of intellectual property to which they did not have rights, which Viacom describes as Google’s continued drive to “take the fruit of our efforts without permission and destroying enormous value in the process. This is value that rightfully belongs to the writers, directors and talent who create it and companies like Viacom that have invested to make possible this innovation and creativity. “
Google doesn’t seem to have much of a leg to stand on here, and with continued support from other media players Google may find itself in a tough situation despite seeming to be undaunted by the lawsuit.
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