Viacom Sues Google For One Billion Dollars

Viacom has brought down its wrath on Google, filing a one billion dollar lawsuit against the YouTube unit for copyright violation. Viacom is claiming over 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom programming that they have found on YouTube, basically valuing each clip at $6,250.
Viacom will have to prove YouTube does not fall under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act’s “Safe Harbor” provision, which exempts service providers from liability caused by the actions of its users. Mark Cuban, who has subpoena’d Google over the identities of YouTube users, claims that Google may not fall under Safe Harbor because it is not a hosting company, due to the search, sharing, and ranking features of its website.
Indeed, as I pointed out yesterday, the number one “buzzworthy” video on YouTube was a copyright infringer, a blatantly obvious example of infringing content being promoted by Google Video. The system may be automated, but […]

Original post by Nathan Weinberg