Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 7:50 AM PT

 

Viacom Sues YouTube for $1B

Viacom sued YouTube and Google today, seeking an injunction against the video site’s display of copyrighted materials and more than $1 billion in damages for 160,000 copies of its content on the site seen 1.5 billion times.

In a press release accompanying the lawsuit (download full lawsuit here), Viacom said,

“YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google. 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. In fact, YouTube’s strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden - and high cost - of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement.”

Viacom had previously demanded Google pull more than 100,000 clips from YouTube seen 1.2 billion times, an order YouTube had complied with, though the accusations appear to have risen in size since then. Viacom has also announced it will be sending its content to emerging YouTube alternative Joost.

YouTube has yet to formally roll out any copyright filtering technology, something the site promised it would do before the end of last year.

Just last week, video site Bolt settled a similar lawsuit for approximately $10 million with Universal Music Group, something it had to sell itself to GoFish in order to manage.

Update: Reuters has a report out as well

Update 2: Google’s response, as quoted on various sites:

We have not received the lawsuit but are confident that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders and believe the courts will agree. YouTube is great for users and offers real opportunities to rights holders: the opportunity to interact with users; to promote their content to a young and growing audience; and to tap into the online advertising market. We will certainly not let this suit become a distraction to the continuing growth and strong performance of YouTube and its ability to attract more users, more traffic and build a stronger community.

 

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Topic: Legal & Regulatory, Money Power, Networks, Online Video
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  1. [...] has sued YouTube-Google and is seeking $1 billion in damages for copyright infringement. More details on NewTeeVee Share/E-mail | Sphere | Print | Topic: The Daily | Tags: [...]

    GigaOM » Viacom sues YouTube for $1 billion on March 13th, 2007 at 7:53 am - Permalink

  2. yikers!

    drew olanoff on March 13th, 2007 at 8:04 am - Permalink

  3. of course, they sued them. young companies innovate, grand old companies litigate.

    Om Malik on March 13th, 2007 at 8:08 am - Permalink

  4. How exactly is it innovation to give paid content away for free with no ads. Kazaa (and torrents blah blah) do it well. Youtube simply had the pockets to scale the network to handle the incoming traffic.

    That almost directly contradicts your other article.
    http://gigaom.com/2007/03/13/free-a-tactic-not-a-business-model/

    It is pretty clear now youtube has very little watchable user generated content, and quite a bit of content from media companies.

    anon on March 13th, 2007 at 8:23 am - Permalink

  5. Actually, MTV/Viacom could have done the same thing - profited from this whole movement and instead they sat on their asses and now are litgating.

    Look they could have made money from this, been more proactive about this and instead of fighting YouTube, they could have gotten a piece of the pie.

    Viacom has all the assets and they can monetize them whenever they want - free but ad supported. they could have but they didn’t.

    this is nothing to do with “free” article. why because it is simple - the youtube folks put up ads and got paid for their part of the business.

    i agree, content infringement is not a good thing and it should be stopped. why sue them now - like almost a year after the two companies started negotiating? why now? Google dollars!

    Om Malik on March 13th, 2007 at 8:45 am - Permalink

  6. Whether or not content infringement is good — the decision of the case will have to set a precedent for all the other small and large companies dying to get a small slice of youtube dollars for users posting their copyrighted content. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. It could open the floodgates?

    Chris on March 13th, 2007 at 8:53 am - Permalink

  7. There is a larger issue at play here — which is that content owners want to monetize their assets themselves as opposed to having other people take a cut of the pie.

    The days of companies making money without paying for it are gone - basically YouTube got $1.65B without paying the folks who made them successful.

    In my opinion, this will change going forward.

    Sameer Mithal on March 13th, 2007 at 8:58 am - Permalink

  8. [...] Viacom sued YouTube in U.S. District Court today for more than $1 billion in damages. [...]

    NewTeeVee » Are You Kidding? A Billion Dollars? on March 13th, 2007 at 9:08 am - Permalink

  9. I was just talking to my non-techie friend last night, trying to explain the sheer number and variety of video sharing sites, and it hit me — what’s the value of YouTube beyond all the copyright infringing content on the site?

    It’s not a particularly innovative site in terms of social features, the content that people post to the site isn’t as good as what you can find on Blip or Revver, there are few if any ways to make money on your own content at YouTube, and the quality of the actual video…don’t get me started.

    YouTube offered a great search engine for old and new clips from television, film and the like. Take away all that content, and you’ve got yourself ‘yet another video sharing site.’

    I’m not saying Viacom is right in bringing suit (in fact, doesn’t the DMCA explicitly protect YouTube from this very litigation?) — but seriously, I’m not really sure what Google was thinking when they bought it.

    Jackson West on March 13th, 2007 at 9:14 am - Permalink

  10. I have no problem with this suit. If you remember back to the months before Google purchased YouTube, most analysts and bloggers were expecting YouTube to be out of business in a number of weeks due to either ligitation or bandwidth costs.

    I agree with the points on the content. Once you get past the copyrighted material there just is not much there.

    Content producers need to be protected. Say all you want about Viacom being a slow, tired old media company. Some of that is true but some of that is that these guys play by the rules (for the most part) and were trying to figure out ways to make sure everyone gets paid. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, but also to insure that they got paid.

    http://www.hungryflix.com is trying to build a community of great content, that is accessible and compelling. Content providers are our bread and butter and we will ensure that they are taken care of.

    Brian Andrews on March 13th, 2007 at 9:22 am - Permalink

  11. Actually, MTV/Viacom could have done the same thing - profited from this whole movement and instead they sat on their asses and now are litgating.
    —(1)>
    See my above comment, the service gootube is a free “hosting service”, as you stated in the other article. As such it has no business model. Gootube will have to jump through quite a few hurdles (legal/licensing) to put ads up.

    Cuban has actually made the interesting point that Gootube uses safe harbor previsions designs for hosting services, but does not actually operate with a hosting business model.
    http://www.blogmaverick.com/2007/03/08/supoenas-and-gootube/
    “Contrast that with Gootube that flaunts their position that when pirated content is hosted on Youtube or Google Video, they are legally safe. ” ( in the context of comparing actual hosting services with infringing material to gootube services)

    Last I heard, MTV/Viacom are not in a charity business. Their business is content, so of course they will go to great lengths to protect the loss of control over that content on a large scale.
    /—–
    Hence, the new comedy central as you have reported in the Newteevee section of your website. Users can now get most of the same clips for embedding on their websites.
    http://newteevee.com/2007/03/02/viacom-online-jumps-after-youtube-split/ (In your own words).
    /—–
    Look they could have made money from this, been more proactive about this and instead of fighting YouTube, they could have gotten a piece of the pie.
    —-(2)>
    You know the licensing deals offered to Viacom by Gootube for their own content?(or what they have shown publicly is static?) Interesting.

    —->
    Viacom has all the assets and they can monetize them whenever they want - free but ad supported. they could have but they didn’t.
    —-(3)>
    Variation of above— You know the strategy Viacom has?(or what they have shown publicly is static?) Interesting.
    —->
    this is nothing to do with “free” article. why because it is simple - the youtube folks put up ads and got paid for their part of the business.
    —–(4)>
    It has everything to do with it. No way the ads covered hosting then or now. It is another sign of the bubble.
    + Who cares if it is evil, lets get a lot of eyeballs. (:P at copyright holders, content providers. Up next Google Print!)
    If (Youtube == Napster++)
    print ” We are in a bubble!n”
    .
    ——>
    i agree, content infringement is not a good thing and it should be stopped. why sue them now - like almost a year after the two companies started negotiating? why now? Google dollars!
    ——(5)>
    Yeah of course, but if you get large enough off of copyright infringement it is OK.

    Don’t Google dollars spend the same if found in the pockets of a google lawsuit?

    There is still going to be a problem if google won’t pay you what you think you are worth, AND removes the concrete for the long-term errorsion of your cable and online brands.

    It would be foolish to settle for less than your market projections. (At the same time Google has a strong incentive to UNDER pay, after all they do not want competition from content holders that would make their expenditure on Youtube only about furthering “video search.”)

    ———–THE RESULT——–!
    Viacom does NOT want to look back like Yahoo (Search is Dead! and not buying google for 5 billion or there abouts), and see that they passed the keys to google for peanuts on a long term deal in a market not yet clearly defined. I would think this was obvious.

    anon on March 13th, 2007 at 9:32 am - Permalink

  12. [...] our previous coverage: initial news of the lawsuit, the damages by the numbers. Share/E-mail Sphere Topic: Online Video, Legal & Regulatory, [...]

    NewTeeVee » YouTube-Viacom, the CliffsNotes Version on March 13th, 2007 at 9:50 am - Permalink

  13. There would never have been a need for YouTube if MTV wasn’t the unadventurous, RnB fixated, unadulterated rubbish it is these days. Most of the MTV content on YouTube is from the “good old days” when said channel actually made some kind of effort to introduce NEW music.

    heshter on March 13th, 2007 at 10:10 am - Permalink

  14. I know a of CEOs of a online content services and he told me the eyeballs from YouTube are just not profitable at the moment and is one reason his service never bothered launching a consumer ingestion platform ,which gets back to the question What is the value of offering Free content? .

    Then there is the issue of advertisers not wanting to have thier products associted with content that may not be in line with the companies policys or interests .

    Matt_ on March 13th, 2007 at 11:31 am - Permalink

  15. [...] young companies innovate, and old timers litigate. One is reminded of his words when reading about Viacom’s decision to YouTube-Google and seek a billion dollars in damages for copyright infringement. Cynthia Brumfield describes the [...]

    BuzzRun.com » Archive » Viacom sues YouTube for $1 billion on March 13th, 2007 at 12:54 pm - Permalink

  16. [...] For those of you who missed the Viacom vs. Google suit [...]

    De Gardener on March 13th, 2007 at 1:05 pm - Permalink

  17. [...] bu tip durumlarda sözü YouTube’a bırakan Google’dan bu sefer resmi bir açıklama da gelmiş. Google kendilerine henüz bunun ulaşmadığını ve YouTube’un telif hakları konusunda bir [...]

    Viacom YouTube’a 1 Milyar Dolarlık Telih Hakkı Davası Açtı at Okyanus Ötesi on March 13th, 2007 at 3:46 pm - Permalink

  18. Pivotal Lawsuit: Viacom vs. YouTube…

    Viacom has sued Google’s YouTube for $1 billion, alleging copyright infringement by the video hosting site.  MSNBC’s John Schoen notes in Media world eyes Viacom-YouTube slugfest,
Viacom has been leading the charge by established entertai...
    rogerd's notebook on March 13th, 2007 at 6:35 pm - Permalink

  19. [...] like these, Google usually leaves the announcements to YouTube but this time it is widely reported that they came out with a statement: We have not received the lawsuit but are confident that [...]

    Viacom Sues YouTube at turker.out.println on March 13th, 2007 at 10:17 pm - Permalink

  20. [...] [fonte] [fonte] [...]

    Video Monte Ceneri » YouTube - Viacom on March 14th, 2007 at 1:56 pm - Permalink

  21. [...] aligning itself with the indie creators who it’s nurtured rather than the pro creators who are suing it, will launch the YouTube Video Awards Monday (link not live as of Sunday night), according to [...]

    NewTeeVee » YouTube Rewards Users with Statuettes on March 18th, 2007 at 10:33 pm - Permalink

  22. [...] bu konularda sessizliğini koruyan Google bile bir açıklama yaparak kendilerine bu konuyla ilgili resmi bir bilginin ulaşmadığını ancak YouTube’un [...]

    İnternet Devri » Viacom’dan YouTube’a 1 Milyar dolarlık dava on March 20th, 2007 at 5:17 am - Permalink

  23. [...] all the hubbub about frontrunner YouTube’s legal troubles and wannabe front-runner ‘NewCo’, smaller sites are taking their disappointing [...]

    NewTeeVee » IFILM, Soapbox Consolidate & Retrench on March 23rd, 2007 at 11:12 am - Permalink

  24. [...] to figure out what the deal is with Viacom suing Google? Serious Corespondent Demetri Martin explains it all on this Daily Show [...]

    jibber jabber: the eddie underworld » Viacom vs Google, on YouTube on March 23rd, 2007 at 4:44 pm - Permalink

  25. [...] Google is hemming and hawing about implementing copyright filtering, especially now that it’s ensnared in a serious lawsuit? Now that would be [...]

    NewTeeVee » Would Filtering YouTube Make it More Liable? on March 24th, 2007 at 10:13 am - Permalink

  26. [...] NewTeeVee » Viacom Sues YouTube for $1B [...]

    Was Big Media Just Preying on YouTube to Hold Them Ransom? at Baron VC on March 26th, 2007 at 10:36 am - Permalink

  27. [...] I imagine Viacom considers those contractual and licensing issues to be oh, I dunno, a small bone of contention. [...]

    NewTeeVee » Traditional Media’s Digital Experiment on March 28th, 2007 at 12:45 pm - Permalink

  28. [...] Talvez não volte a funcionar mas é uma prova de que o Youtube tem o dedo no gatilho quanto a retirar vídeos do site. Provavelmente por causa das negociações e processos. [...]

    What’s in my mind? - » Como retirar vídeos do Youtube do ar on April 17th, 2007 at 12:18 pm - Permalink

  29. [...] While VH1 is to be lauded for making their stock of videos available 24-7-365 online, my question is why not just partner with somebody who’s already built the technology and all the features to serve these ads set to music? Oh, right. [...]

    NewTeeVee » VH1 Classic Adds Video, Features on April 30th, 2007 at 2:08 pm - Permalink

  30. [...] Google filed a response to Viacom’s allegations of complicity in widespread copyright violations on YouTube today in New York’s federal district court. The suit, brought by Viacom, is seeking $1 billion in damages. [...]

    NewTeeVee » Google Snarks Back Against Viacom on April 30th, 2007 at 7:00 pm - Permalink

  31. [...] partnership signals YouTube is back on track with its pre-Google dealmaking, though a lot has changed since last [...]

    NewTeeVee » EMI Finally Partners with YouTube on May 31st, 2007 at 8:30 am - Permalink

  32. [...] is something that TV companies like Viacom are going to love: The Japanese government is apparently considering allowing anyone and everyone [...]

    Zatz Not Funny!»Blog Archive » End of Pirated TV (in Japan)? on June 1st, 2007 at 6:32 am - Permalink

  33. [...] puts father and son, both of whom received their law degrees from Columbia, on opposite sides of a billion-dollar copyright lawsuit brought by Viacom against YouTube in New York Southern District C…Dauman Jr. had listed “Online Media” as his industry on LinkedIn, but has since removed [...]

    NewTeeVee The Ties That Bind Google and Viacom « on August 9th, 2007 at 3:50 pm - Permalink

  34. [...] on YouTube right now isn’t the latest installment from Smosh, but the meta-ironic actions of a certain litigious content megalopoly in issuing takedown notices for content it doesn’t even have a clear claim to [...]

    Viacom Pulls Clip It Doesn’t Necessarily Own « NewTeeVee on August 31st, 2007 at 12:09 am - Permalink

  35. [...] Viacom spokesperson told MediaPost yesterday that the media giant’s ongoing billion-dollar lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement on YouTube is still on. Now that Google has unveiled [...]

    Coalition to Counter Google on Video Copyright « NewTeeVee on October 18th, 2007 at 10:17 am - Permalink

  36. [...] bu tip durumlarda sözü YouTube’a b?rakan Google’dan bu sefer resmi bir aç?klama da gelmi?. Google kendilerine henüz bunun ula?mad???n? ve YouTube’un telif haklar? konusunda bir [...]

    Okyanus Ötesi » Viacom YouTube’a 1 Milyar Dolarl?k Telif Hakk? Davas? Açt? on December 12th, 2007 at 12:16 am - Permalink

  37. [...] NewTeeVee.com reports that Viacom sued YouTube and Google today over the display of copyrighted materials. [...]

    Viacom Sues YouTube | BillCammack.com on February 25th, 2008 at 4:46 am - Permalink

  38. [...] in Viacom v. YouTube A federal judge denied Viacom’s claim for punitive damages in its $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google/YouTube. Viacom can still sue for damages, with statutory penalties for copyright [...]

    No Punitive Damages in Viacom v. YouTube « NewTeeVee on March 10th, 2008 at 5:55 pm - Permalink

  39. [...] their war of words over the past couple of days, as each side braces for a big fight in the looming $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit Viacom brought against Google-owned [...]

    Settlement in Viacom vs. YouTube? “Nope” « NewTeeVee on May 7th, 2008 at 8:15 am - Permalink

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