Tuesday
Mar132007
YouTube promotes Viacom content and gets slapped with $1B lawsuit
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 4:04
If this is how Viacom shows its appreciation, then I'm glad the Daily Show hasn't hired me! They'd give me the job and demand I pay them. What late 1990s thinking is this?:
Viacom, which owns MTV and Nickelodeon, says YouTube uses its shows illegally.
Viacom alleges that about 160,000 unauthorised clips of its programmes have been loaded onto YouTube's site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
Google says it is "confident" that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders.
As well as more than $1bn in damages, the legal action seeks an injunction to prevent what Viacom calls "massive intentional copyright infringement".
booooooooo
Technorati Tags: stupidness, viacom, youtube
Reader Comments (2)
Who didn't see this one coming? The big media conglomerates just had to wait until YouTube was bought by a company that could handle the damages sought... I'm no IP expert but I do study it - IMO this actually seems like it could be a slam dunk for Viacom. I don't know if they'll be getting a billion in damages though!
They'll learn that Joost is not the way to go. I used get a good amount of my Daily Show / Colbert viewing just from YouTube. This will just lead to less interest in Viacom programs.