Viacom's Billion Dollar Copyright Fight 'Threatens' Net, Says Google

I can still easily find and watch clips of Viacom-owned The Colbert Report on YouTube, something Google says is rare and that Viacom says is why it filed $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google last year. Now Google says Viacom's lawsuit "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information" over the Web.

In court papers filed late last week in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan Google argued that if Google, ISPs, and Web sites to be held liable for content posted by users it threatens the way people legitimately exchange information over the Internet. Google added that its efforts to police YouTube and boot copyrighted material from the service is in keeping with the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act (a provision requires companies to remove copyrighted material upon notification).

Nice Try, But Not Enough, Says Viacom

Viacom is not buying it. The entertainment company says it has found over 150,000 clips of its content on YouTube. Viacom claims that the "cornerstone" of Google's YouTube strategy is to sell advertising based on traffic volume from copyrighted material.

Viacom began legal proceedings against Google last year, claiming content from Comedy Central, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite and Paramount Pictures was frequently posted in full on YouTube. The company claims Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, for example, has been viewed on YouTube "1.5 billion times."

Google maintains it has gone "far beyond" any legal requirements to protect copyrighted material. Last year, the company unveiled a software tool to help block copyrighted material from appearing on the Web site, a move that Viacom immediately criticized.

CREDIT - PC World contributor Ian Paul

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