Viacom: piracy is the cornerstone of YouTube

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 27 May 2008 at 08:50

Google has hit back at accusations from Viacom that copyright infringement is the bedrock of its YouTube business model.

Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion, after claiming that several of its popular shows - including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, South Park and MTV Unplugged - are illegally shown on YouTube. Viacom claims that there's more than 150,000 unauthorised clips from its shows on YouTube, including The Inconvenient Truth documentary, which alone has been viewed "an astounding 1.5 billion times".

The company claims Google has done "little or nothing" to stop copyright infringement. "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," Viacom claims, according to a report by AP.

Google retort

However, in paper submitted to the court, Google has denied Viacom's allegations, claiming that it "goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works."

The search giant goes on to claim that the Viacom case "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression."

The court case is an unwanted nuisance for Google, which is having trouble making YouTube pay its way even without the threat of huge fines for copyright infringement.

In an interview published at the beginning of this month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted that finding a way to make money out of YouTube was Google's top priority this year.