VIACOM sues GOOGLE for YOUTUBE copyright infringment
 

The top of the tube food chain...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080526/...outube_lawsuit

good it has to stop.

I seriously doubt it will ever make a difference.

Ugh they always ask for toomuch money.Those videos on youtube are unavaible anywhere else,and south park is avaible to watch on official page.

Nothing more then a negotiating tactic.

So it's okay to use content if its available on the official site? :1orglaugh

Something like this has been in the works for a while. Youtube got famous and made its owners millions by using other people's content without their permission (stealing it). Google knew there would be legal issues with the site and as soon as they owned it they started striking deals with many companies. There have been several other companies that have sued, but they just did so to get their content removed. What sucks is that Youtube hides behind the law saying they are just a host and essentially they put the burden on the content owners to police their site and report when they find their content on it.

Sites like Youtube, while fun, are a bane on the webmaster's of the world because they teach visitors that you can get anything you want for free and that sharing and stealing content is perfectly fine.

He's a dumbass. He's not even a real webmaster and has no understanding of how a toaster works, let alone internet business.

This is going to be a great case. I am going to write court TV and see if they know about the case and if they are going to follow it.

If anyone has the money and power to fuck with google, it's viacom.

thats gonna be interesting

Exactly.

This is just them stepping up the whole 'royalties' discussion much like the Rick Roll who get's some percentage of cash per play. This lawsuit's been going almost from the time Google bought YoutTube.

Oh, and yeah... Viacom ALWAYS asks for too much money. But refuses to make much of the shit on YouTube available otherwise.

:disgust

YouTube law fight 'threatens net'
 

A one billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube threatens internet freedom, according to its owner Google.

Google's claim follows Viacom's move to sue the video sharing service for its inability to keep copyrighted material off its site.

Viacom says it has identified 150,000 unauthorised clips on YouTube.

In court documents Google's lawyers say the action "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information" over the web.

The search giant's legal team also maintained that YouTube had been faithful to the requirements of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and that they responded properly to claims of infringement.

In papers submitted to a Manhattan court, Google said it and YouTube "goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works".

Viacom disagreed that either firm had lived up to that standard and said that they had done "little or nothing" to stop infringement.

Abuse

In a rewritten lawsuit filed last month, Viacom claimed YouTube consistently allowed unauthorised copies of popular television programming and movies to be posted on its website and viewed tens of thousands of times.

It said it had identified more than 150,000 such abuses which included clips from shows such as South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants and MTV Unplugged.

The company says the infringement also included the documentary An Inconvenient Truth which had been viewed "an astounding 1.5 billion times".

Viacom, which is asking for damages for the unauthorised viewing of its programming, said its tally represented only a fraction of the content on YouTube that violates its copyrights.

"The availability on the YouTube site of a vast library of the copyrighted works of plaintiffs and others is the cornerstone of defendants' business plan," Viacom said.

Viacom originally started legal action last year and filed an amended version last month. Earlier this month Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone told Dow Jones: "When we filed this lawsuit, we not only served our own interests, we served the interests of everyone who owns copyrights they want protected."

He added: "We cannot tolerate any form of piracy by anyone, including YouTube...they cannot get away with stealing our products."

For its part, Google said the only way the legal action would be resolved was in court.

Google's vice president of content partnerships David Eun has said: "We're going all the way to the Supreme Court. We've been very clear about it."

After the legal action was first started, YouTube launched an anti-piracy tool that checks uploaded videos against the original content in an effort to flag piracy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7420955.stm

It's not ok,i just say how they always overcharge value of their content.For example when mpaa/riaa/bsa taking some warez site,they say how that site made damages in hundrets of millions,which is complete nonsense beacuse if there was not that warez site then users will go to another site,they will never buy a content itself.They should simply concetrating on removing such sites and that's it,and not starting law suits and asking for billions which they will never get.But again it is good when someone sue google,beacuse google is not problem just beacuse of youtube.it is problem beacuse google search engine gives major keywords to piracy sites.

Post proof how i am not webmaster or be banned.

I'm sure lawyers on both sides were celebrating with $10,000 a day hookers on that announcement - long drawn out.. but MOST importantly - expensive as all hell. :2 cents:

jews suing jews

LOL

let them battle it out

that's fucking funny

i will bet you 1,000,000 dollars that he won't be banned for that.

"Fuck" You Tube! I hope they have their asses handed to them. Maybe this will set a precedent for the future if the lawsuit is won.

google in trooble

O realy?I am long enough on gfy to learn how the get someone banned.Become a gfy advertiser,send a compliant to Eric and problem solved.