Copyright war flares with suit vs. YouTube
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A lawsuit filed by entertainment giant Viacom Inc. , seeking more than $1 billion in damages against video-sharing website YouTube and its parent company Google Inc., raises the volume on one of the hottest debates in the technology business: Can Internet sites post snippets of content produced by others without paying them?
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Viacom is suing online video provider YouTube and its parent company, Google, for more than $1 billion, saying the companies are infringing on Viacom's copyrights because almost 160,000 unauthorized video clips are available for viewing on YouTube.
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Viacom is up in arms over a new YouTube proposal, and Google is searching for an attorney to help the company tackle the media-sharing issues that the search giant inherited with its controversial YouTube acquisition.
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Entertainment conglomerate Viacom Inc. today sued video-sharing site YouTube and corporate parent Google Inc. over what it alleges is massive copyright infringement, escalating a battle over how video content is distributed over the Internet.
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(InfoWorld) - 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. Viacom, whose properties include MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, and Paramount Pictures, ran out of patience after months of discussions with Google and YouTube, the company said in a statement. "It has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users," the statement reads. YouTube and Google have failed to deliver efficient filtering tools, allowingÂ "vast amounts" of unauthorized Viacom video to exist on the video-sharing site, the company said. YouTube acknowledged receiving a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) request from Viacom to remove the videos. "It's unfortunate that Viacom will no longer be able to benefit from YouTube's passionate audience, which has helped to promote many of Viacom's shows," YouTube said in a statement, adding that it will comply with the request. Viacom's move is the latest from copyright owners who are upset over the unauthorized uploading and streaming of their videos on YouTube, which is one of the most popular Web sites in the world. The copyright issue has long been a known liability for YouTube. Founded in early 2005, YouTube quickly became the world's most popular video-sharing site, beating established players including Yahoo, Microsoft's Internet unit, AOL, and Google. Impressed with that popularity, Google bought YouTube last November for $1.65 billion in an all-stock transaction, but it put 12.5 percent of the amount in an escrow account for one year to "secure certain indemnification obligations," it said. Since the acquisition, Google and YouTube have been busy negotiating with video content owners and developing technology to detect and remove copyrighted videos uploaded by users without permission. Beyond its attempts to strike deals with corporations, Google has recently also indicated its intent to share revenue with individual content owners. It has also begun integrating YouTube with the similar Google Video service. "We're pushing very, very hard for the success of YouTube as a brand. It has tremendous traction with the demographic that we care about. An awful lot of people are now using YouTube every day in their daily lives," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said this week duringÂ the company's quarterly earnings conference call. Schmidt said Google's primary focus with YouTube is user adoption, while it also experiments with advertising models. YouTube is growing its user base and advertising very fast, to the point that it's now clear to Google that the price it paid for YouTube is clearly justified, Schmidt said. In its statement, Viacom precisely complained that Google is benefitting from its content without providing Viacom with adequate compensation. "YouTube and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice without extending fair compensation to the people who have expended all of the effort and cost to create it," Viacom said.
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By Elise Ackerman, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Feb. 23--Google is set to start filtering videos and other content on  YouTube for copyrighted materials, taking a key step in helping the online  video-sharing site comply with one of the biggest complaints it faces --  rampant piracy.
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The battle over digital copyrights and illegal file sharing is often portrayed as a struggle between Internet scofflaws and greedy corporations.
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The great debate over file-sharing rages on, with some, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation maintaining that copyright law doesn&#39;t matter anymore.
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By Michael Liedtke, Associated Press  SAN FRANCISCO -- Television talk show host Maury Povich hasn't always been a big fan of YouTube Inc. because the online video sharing pioneer frequently displays unauthorized clips from his copyrighted program.
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Blog: The companies are about to face off in a federal appeals court over their ongoing patent dispute.
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Music industry icon complains that the onus is on artists and rights' creators to police YouTube at their own expense.
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A dispute between an atheist group and a creationist group over some postings on YouTube  has critics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act crying foul. They say it's a new and disturbing trend, and that false copyright claims can distort political and cultural debate.
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Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, contends the wildly popular Web sites YouTube and MySpace are violating copyright laws by allowing users to post music videos and other content involving Universal artists.
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Facing a copyright lawsuit from MPAA, company is trying to avoid disclosing user information.
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com November 16, 2004, 4:00 AM PT. After years of bitter battles between copyright holders and file-swapping services, the outlines of a partial truce are emerging that may soon see
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A Japanese entertainment group has asked the popular video-sharing site YouTube Inc. to implement a system to prevent users from uploading videos that would infringe copyrights, a group spokesman said Tuesday.
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Why Viacom's latest attack on Google's YouTube will likely result in a settlement.