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YouTube sued for $1bn

14/03/2007 - The entertainment company Viacom Media has announced that it is suing YouTube and its parent company, Google, for $1bn (£517m). Viacom has a vast media network including the TV channels MTV and Nickelodeon and they claim the video sharing site has been showing clips of its shows illegally.
According to claims made by Viacom, about 160,000 unauthorised clips have been uploaded onto YouTube and they have been viewed over 1.5 billion times

Google, despite claiming it is "confident" that YouTube has respected copyright laws, saw its shares fall by $11.72 as a result of the announcement of legal action.

Viacom will be seeking an injunction to prevent what it describes as "massive intentional copyright infringement" as well as the $1bn in damages.

The legal action follows a request the entertainment company made in February 2007 for the removal of 100,000 unauthorised clips.

Viacom claims YouTube has ignored this request by refusing to filter the unauthorised clips.

"YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site. 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," the company said in a statement

Google responded by saying: "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."

Since buying YouTube for $1.65bn in 2006 Google has attempted to strike deals with a number of media producers to show their content on the site in return for a fee.

The company has recently made an agreement with the BBC to show short clips of their output on the video sharing site, the BBC will receive a share of the advertising revenue in return.

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<a href="http://www.pulsewebhosting.com/news/youtube-sued-for-$1bn/54/" title="YouTube sued for $1bn">YouTube sued for $1bn</a> Published Date: 2007-03-14 12:04:10

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