Entertainment giant Viacom Inc. -- home of cable networks such
as MTV and Comedy Central -- is suing Google Inc.'s YouTube for
$1 billion, alleging the video Web site knowingly violates copyright
law by posting unlicensed Viacom content, such as clips from "The
Daily Show."
YouTube, which allows anyone to post video to the Web to be viewed
by a global audience, includes both user-generated video and clips
produced by professional content-creators, such as Viacom. The
Web site was purchased by Google in October for $1.65 billion.
In October, YouTube said it began purging Comedy Central clips
from its site. But in February, the company demanded that YouTube
remove more than 100,000 clips of Viacom shows. Also in February,
Viacom agreed to license much of its content to Joost, a nascent
YouTube rival.
Viacom alleges that YouTube does little or nothing to prevent
users from posting copyrighted videos from appearing on its site,
largely because such popular videos -- which include clips from
Comedy Central's "South Park" and "The Colbert
Report" and Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants"
-- help drive viewers to the ads that appear on YouTube.
"Defendants know and intend that a substantial amount of
the content on the YouTube site consists of unlicensed infringing
copies of copyrighted works and have done little or nothing to
prevent this massive infringement," reads Viacom's complaint,
brought in a New York federal court. "To the contrary, 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."
The Viacom suit alleges that YouTube's attempts to protect copyrighted
material have fallen short.
Although YouTube touts the availability of purported copyright
protection tools on its site, at best these tools help copyright
owners find a portion of the infringing files, and, as to that
portion, only after the files have been uploaded," the suit
reads.
Google told the Associated Press it had not seen the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is reminiscent of the battles several years ago over
music file sharing, when sites such as Napster came under fire
for letting users share digitized songs with each other without
compensating the artists or record companies.
Those fights among the record industry, Web companies and users
in part produced the situation that exists today -- where legal
sales of online music have proliferated and changed the way the
recording industry works.
The spread of broadband technology has now provided the typical
home computer user with enough speed and bandwidth to conveniently
watch videos or share files -- and pushed arguments over video
content to the fore. Traditional broadcast outlets are worried
about how to keep audiences tuned to their channels -- and their
paid advertising -- or at least get a slice of the revenue generated
by Web companies.
YouTube took root initially as a site for users to post home
videos, known as a place to watch quirky pet routines or for would-be
comics to practice their shtick. But it expanded rapidly to become
one of the central sites for video content of all sorts. Its purchase
last year by Google promised to marry YouTube's popularity with
the marketing and advertising clout of one of the Web's most dominant
corporate players.
As it grew, so did tension between the company and the entertainment
industry whose content was drawing viewers to the site.
YouTube and Google executives have argued that the presence,
for example, of clips from Comedy Central on the Internet only
makes the network more popular and serves as a promotional tool
that entertainment companies should be glad to exploit. They have
reached licensing agreements with some major content providers
and have pledged to develop technology that would keep unlicensed
content off of the site.
But the two companies have also come under widespread criticism
for a cavalier approach to protecting content rights.
Microsoft's general counsel recently rebuked Google for its plans
to post hundreds of thousands of books on line without negotiating
rights with authors and publishers. And Internet and entertainment
entrepreneur Mark Cuban earlier this month subpoenaed Google for
the names of YouTube users who posted a version of the South Korean
monster movie "The Host" online a week before Cuban's
company was to debut the film in the United States.
