Viacom today announced it has filed a lawsuit against Google in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Viacom filed the lawsuit claiming that Google has intentionally been committing massive copyright infringement of Viacom’s entertainment properties. The lawsuit seeks more than a whopping $1 billion in damages, in addition to an injunction that will prohibit Google/YouTube from further copyright infringement.
In its statement, Viacom said that “almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom’s programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.” No doubt, Viacom would have greatly preferred these page views to have come from its own online video sharing website iFilm, so that they would have been able to receive advertising revenue.
Viacom also said Google 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.” This is basically saying that fans of content not owned by Google are watching the “creative works” on YouTube while Google benefits from and exploits these users’ devotions to these T.V. shows.
Viacom went on to say that YouTube’s entire business model is “based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content.” Viacom’s statement even says that Google is avoiding taking “proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site.”
Viacom is also unhappy that it has to police YouTube’s content and says that YouTube has placed “the entire burden – and high cost – of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement.”
Viacom believes that “YouTube and Google are continuing to take the fruit” of its efforts without permission while also “destroying enormous value in the process.” Viacom also added a little sentiment by saying the value “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.” Despite the added emotion, however, there is no doubt that the lawsuit centers on money.
After “unproductive negotiation” Viacom believes that its only choice is to turn to “turn to the courts to prevent Google and YouTube from continuing to steal” its content and to gain compensation for damages.
There is no doubt that this lawsuit will turn into an ugly legal battle over the next couple of months. It is definitely going to be one of the largest media lawsuits of 2007, and something worthy of being aired on Viacom-owned Judge Judy.
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