BBC – May 27, 2008
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. 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.
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BBC NEWS | Technology | YouTube law fight 'threatens net'