Viacom sued Google yesterday for $1 billion in damages plus an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement, contending that "almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom’s programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips [have] been viewed more than 1.5 billion times."

The Viacom statement argued that YouTube's entire business model is infringement dependent:

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.

This behavior stands in stark contrast to the actions of other significant distributors, who have recognized the fair value of entertainment content and have concluded agreements to make content legally available to their customers around the world.

There is no question that YouTube and Google are continuing 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.

posted by James DeLong @ 11:36 AM | Enforcement & Remedies, Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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