Viacom Suing Google for… 1 Billion Dollars!

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Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion. YouTube signs deals with CBS and NBC. Viacom signs deal with Joost (formerly known as ‘The Venice Project’). Now Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion because of YouTube’s “massive intentional copyright infringement.”

“YouTube’s strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site,” stated Viacom in response to their reason for suing YouTube. “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.”

According to the New York Times, over 160,000 unauthorized clips were uploaded to YouTube that belong to Viacom and were viewed over 1.5 billion times including popular Viacom-produced TV show, The Colbert Report. Negotiations had failed in the past between both Google and Viacom.

On top of that, Google/YouTube is also dealing with the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban. Cuban had previously sold a company called Broadcast.com to Yahoo! for $5.7 billion. Cuban had recently asked Google to subpoena users that uploaded Mark Cuban’s movies illegally on YouTube [Source: Mark Cuban's blog].

As the story develops further, I’ll keep covering it up until the verdict is made.

Related posts:

1. Fox, Viacom, CBS, and NBC Universal Teaming Up To Take on YouTube
2. News Corp, NBC, Viacom wants $150,000 per unauthorized video from YouTube
3. Google/YouTube Acquisition Finalized. YouTube Now Valuated at $1.775 Billion
4. Possible Upcoming YouTube Traffic Surge Via March Madness?
5. MPAA Wants Google To Fight Piracy in China