United States entertainment giant Viacom on Tuesday launched a billion-dollar lawsuit against Google and its affiliate YouTube, accusing the video-sharing website of “massive” copyright infringement.
Viacom, whose empire includes MTV and Paramount Pictures, said YouTube had “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,” the firm said in a statement.
Viacom filed suit in a New York district court accusing YouTube and Google of “massive intentional copyright infringement” of its entertainment properties.
The suit seeks more than $1-billion in damages, as well as an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement.
It alleges that almost 160 000 unauthorised clips of Viacom’s programming have been available on the website, which has attracted millions of followers during its two-year existence.
Last month, YouTube said it would remove more than 100 000 highlights of Viacom television programmes after a promised copyright-protection system was not installed on the website.
Copyright efforts
YouTube has stepped up its efforts to remove copyrighted material, and to tie up with entertainment providers, since it was taken over by Google for $1,65-billion in November.
The website says it has concluded more than 1 000 partnerships with content providers, both big and small, including heavyweight broadcasters the BBC, NBC, CBS and Fox.
Viacom, however, said it had no choice but to sue after “a great deal of unproductive negotiation” failed to curtail YouTube’s “unlawful business model”.
“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,” it said.
“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.”
Google, based in California, could not immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
The Viacom stable also includes Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and more than 130 other television networks around the world, plus an array of websites and the DreamWorks movie studio.
Microsoft attack
The lawsuit comes a week after software giant Microsoft launched a stinging attack on Google, accusing its internet rival of riding roughshod over copyright in a rush to grab potentially lucrative content for free.
In 2005, Google launched a controversial project to digitalise millions of books on the shelves of libraries around the world. Microsoft also noted that Google faces a copyright minefield following its acquisition of YouTube.
Agence France-Presse has sued Google in both France and the United States, alleging the internet search engine includes the agency’s headlines, news summaries and photographs without permission on its “Google News” portal.
Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, said last week the company did obey copyright laws, “and the result has been more exposure and in many cases more revenue for authors, publishers and producers of content”.
In early New York trade, Google’s high-flying share price was down 0,89% at $450,70, while Viacom stock was flat at $39,56. — AFP