Viacom brings the hate

Summary: Today Viacom brought a lawsuit against the popular Google property YouTube for $1 billion dollars in damages, citing that the website intentionally violated its copyright. The claim states that YouTube has hosted nearly 160,000 unauthorized clips of their programming.

By Alan Graham for Web 2.0 Explorer | March 13, 2007 -- 07:31 GMT (00:31 PDT)

Today Viacom brought a lawsuit against the popular Google property YouTube for $1 billion dollars in damages, citing that the website intentionally violated its copyright. The claim states that YouTube has hosted nearly 160,000 unauthorized clips of their programming.

I'll be writing more about this later as more facts become available, but in the meantime, here's a rundown of news items about the site:

CNET - Basic news item with other good links to previous stories

Bloomberg - Also mentions Mark Cuban's lawsuit against them and has some good quotes form Eric Schmidt

TVWeek.com - Decent back story on the Viacom takedown orders

TVOver - More excerpts from the Viacom statement

Personally I think Viacom is doing the whole iPhone/Cisco/Apple tactic of trying to get a stronger negotiation standpoint through filing a lawsuit. What do you think?

Topic: Social Enterprise

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily email newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

Talkback

3 comments

Log in or register to join the discussion

Could Be

You could be right. Because otherwise, they are shooting themselves in the foot. This is the kind of thing people really don't like, and why would they patronize the people who do such things? There is a communications war going on right now. For a long time now certain corporations have been trying to gain a monopoly on communications which really is an attack on Democracy. That and an obscene greed which drives it, is certainly the main factor in all this.

ZenaPrincess

13 March, 2007 10:14

Reply Vote

Gimme Gimme Gimme

"it's all about me" ...

lmenningen

13 March, 2007 16:44

Reply Vote

I'm going to boycott

I already don't watch TV, but when I notice a Viacom logo on a billboard, that advertiser ceaaes to get my custom.

epcraig

13 March, 2007 17:33

Reply Vote

The best of ZDNet, delivered

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources

Deploying IT Equipment in Small Server Rooms and Branch Offices

This paper discusses realistic improvements you can make to power, cooling, racks, physical security, monitoring, and lighting in small server rooms and branch offices.
AccessNow HTML5 RDP Client - Browser access to Citrix XenApp / XenDesktop

With Ericom AccessNow you can deliver universal, browser-based access to Windows desktops and applications hosted on Citrix XenApp (4.5 and higher) and XenDesktop from Chromebooks and any other endpoint device with any HTML5 browser. Learn more now.
IDC Report: The Future of eMail is Social

This IDC white paper looks at the current state of enterprise email and perceived and real problems that surround its use. The paper discusses the changing nature of collaboration and work fueled by the social web by examining email trends and the emergence of new social collaboration tools. It reveals a future where email converges with social tools to help support the new collaborative enterprise.