Viacom Files Copyright Infringement Suit Against YouTube

NEW YORK, March 13: Viacom is seeking more than $1 billion
in damages from Google and YouTube as part of a copyright infringement suit
announced today.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern
District of New York, alleges “massive intentional copyright infringement of
Viacom's entertainment properties,” and, in addition to the damages, is seeking
an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright
infringement.

Viacom maintains that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom
content have been available on YouTube for some time, and these have been
viewed more than 1.5 billion times. The two companies attempted to reach a
content distribution agreement last month but discussions broke down and Viacom
ordered YouTube to pull all of its content from the site.

In filing the suit, Viacom called YouTube 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.”

The statement further went on to call YouTube’s business
model “clearly illegal” and in “obvious conflict with copyright laws,” with a
strategy of “selling advertising off of unlicensed content.”

The statement continued: “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.”