This time Viacom is accused of violating copyright
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Indy filmmaker said Viacom used his footage in a TV show and cried foul when the filmmaker responded by posting Viacom's clip featuring his work on YouTube. Is this hypocrisy?
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The chief executive of media giant Viacom expressed reservations Thursday about Google's plan to enter YouTube content into a database and give owners the chance to take down the material.Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion over content being used on Google's YouTube Web property without permission. Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit event San Francisco, Viacom President/CEO Phillipe Dauman expressed a willingness to work with online media properties but was skeptical of the Google plan, called Video Identification.Dauman said he had an open mind about reaching an agreement and that the announcement of Video Identification was a positive evolution. But it is not enough."I don't think we're quite there" said Dauman. Google, he said, can do things quickly if it wants to, he added. "I guess they haven't wanted to at this point," Dauman said.Google wants a proprietary system that benefits just one company, but the solution has to be a cooperative effort, said Dauman. He added he suspects Viacom at some point in the future will work with Google. The company does have a good relationship with Facebook, he said.Viacom has had its defenders, according to Dauman. "A lot of the technology companies out there welcome what we do," he said. Companies have said it was about time somebody took a stand, Dauman added.Like Google, Viacom has to protect its intellectual property. "I don't see their algorithms being shared openly with competitors," said Dauman."We took a step reluctantly because we had to," he said.Content producers need to be rewarded for what they do, Dauman said. "That nurtures creativity," he said.Viacom was part of a group of media and technology companies, along with vendors like CBS and Microsoft, that detailed Thursday principles intended to enable growth and development of user-generated content online while respecting intellectual property rights.Featured in these principles is implementation of filtering technology to eliminate infringing content; upgrading of technology and cooperation in technology implementation, and development of procedures to address claims that content was blocked in error. Removal of content also is addressed.Google was not a party to Thursday's announcement.
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(InfoWorld) - Media company Viacom said on Tuesday that it was filing suit against Google Inc. for what it alleges are "massive intentional copyright infringement" of Viacomâs property. Viacom is seeking more than $1 billion in damages and asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to place an injunction on Google and to prevent the company from sharing around 160,000 unauthorized video clips on the company's YouTube video sharing site, Viacom said in a statement. Google was not immediately available for comment. Viacom, which owns popular brands including MTV, Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon, said its programming had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times on YouTube, the video sharing site that Google purchased in October, 2006, for $1.6 billion. âYouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to othersâ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google," Viacom said in a statement.Â  "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." The suit by Viacom follows a notice from Viacom in February, 2007 under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to remove its videos from YouTube. Viacom alleges that Google does little to police copyright violations on YouTube. "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," the company said. Shortly after buying YouTube in October, Google struck deals with Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group to offer music videos on YouTube and share advertising revenue. The company also negotiated with Viacom on a similar deal, but Viacom claims those negotiations were unproductive and that Google is following an "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," Viacom said.
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The Motion Picture Association of America sued YouTVpc and Peekvid.com, claiming they illegally post copyrighted material.
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The Motion Picture Association of America says it has sued a company that sells Internet downloads of current movies like &quot;I, Robot&quot; and &quot;Spider-Man 2&quot; without permission.
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Media conglomerate Viacom Inc. sued Google Inc. and its Internet video-sharing site YouTube for more than $1 billion on Tuesday in the biggest challenge yet to the Web search leader's strategy to dominate the online video market.
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Blog: Media conglomerate had asked federal regulators to require broadband providers to police their networks for copyright violations, but public-interest groups say the effort is "misguided."
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Universal Music Group, the world's   biggest record company, is stepping up pressure against popular   online sites YouTube and MySpace, accusing them of infringing   the copyrights of its artists' music videos.
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Policy group cries foul Google continues to fight allegations that it's promoting video piracy. In March, entertainment giant Viacom slapped Google with a $1bn lawsuit over copyrighted videos posted to YouTube, the site Google purchased last fall, and now, the National Legal and Policy Center is asking whether the search engine cum world power is facilitating copyright infringement on its home-grown video-sharing site, Google Video.â¦
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The Motion Picture Association of America said on Wednesday it has sued a company that sells Internet downloads of current movies like "I, Robot" and "Spider-Man 2" without permission.
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Facing a copyright lawsuit from MPAA, company is trying to avoid disclosing user information.
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The parent company of MTV and Comedy Central is seeking $1 billion in damages, citing âmassive intentional copyright infringement.â
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On Friday, media conglomerate Viacom upbraided YouTube for continuing to host throngs of Viacom videos without permission and demanded that over 100,000 of its clips be removed from the popular video-sharing site owned by Google.
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The Motion Picture Association of America has filed complaints in federal court against individuals accused of sharing pirated copies of films on the Internet.
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Media conglomerate Viacom Inc.  (VIAb.N) said on Tuesday that it was suing Google Inc.   and its Internet video-sharing site YouTube for more than $1  billion over unauthorized use of its programming online.
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SUN VALLEY, Idaho  - Google Inc.  took a  swipe at media conglomerate Viacom Inc. , which is  suing the Internet search leader and its video sharing site  YouTube for $1 billion over "massive copyright infringement."
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(InfoWorld) - ViacomÂ has sued Google, alleging copyright infringement from video-sharing site YouTube and seeking $1 billion in damages. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, follows a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) requestÂ Viacom sent to Google last monthÂ related to the unauthorized posting of Viacom videos to YouTube. At the time,Â Viacom demanded that GoogleÂ remove more than 100,000 of its clipsÂ from YouTube, which Google acquired last year for $1.65 billion. Google said it would comply with the request. In escalating its battle with YouTube with this lawsuit, Viacom reiterates that YouTube has allowed and benefitted from "massive intentional" copyright violations of Viacom videos. In addition to $1 billion inÂ damages, Viacom is asking the court for an injunction barring Google and YouTube from continuing the alleged infringement, Viacom said Tuesday in a statement. Google stands ready to fight the allegations and is confident that "YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders," a Google spokesman said via e-mail. "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," he wrote. Almost 160,000 Viacom video clips have been uploaded to YouTube without permission and have been viewed over 1.5 billion times, Viacom alleges. "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," Viacom charged in the statement. Google and YouTube illegally profit from the traffic that the unauthorized videos draw to their sites by selling advertising, according to Viacom, which added that YouTube has been lax in its attempts to stop its users from uploading copyrighted videos without permission. Viacom decided to sue Google after negotiations and other measures failed to halt the alleged copyright infringement in YouTube, Viacom said. Viacom is a media conglomerate whose properties include MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, and Paramount Pictures. The case is unlikely to result in a total shutdown of YouTube because legitimate uses of the site exist beyond the potentially illegal activities Viacom is objecting to, said Sheldon Klein, an attorney specializing in intellectual-property matters and a partner at Arent Fox LLP in Washington, D.C. However, Google may find itself liable to the infringement claims if Viacom proves that Google and YouTube didn't do all that was possible to prevent users from uploading copyrighted videos without permission, especially after being served with the DMCA notice last month, Klein said. Specifically, if YouTube and Google haven't implemented available technology that would allow them to do a better job of filtering out infringing videos, Viacom could have a legitimate argument in saying they're not trying hard enough, he said. A check of YouTube at noon Eastern time showed multiple instances of Viacom-owned videos, including clips from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and from Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants." One of the "SpongeBob" clips found, for example, has been on YouTube since Feb. 5 of this year, while one of "The Daily Show" clips was uploaded in October of last year. Google executives have said the company is developing technology to address the issue of infringing downloads on YouTube and have promised to deliver it in the near future. Google didn't immediately provide an explanation of what, if any, filtering and detection technology exists in YouTube today. In the meantime, competitorsÂ such asÂ News Corp.'s MySpace, which also lets users upload videos to its site, have licensed third-party systems for detecting infringing videos. There are a number of companies that make this type of software, including Audible Magic, the one chosen by MySpace.