http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/technology/14viacom.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
WhoseTube? Viacom Sues Google Over Video Clips
By MIGUEL HELFT and GERALDINE FABRIKANT
Published: March 14, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO, March 13 — Since it bought YouTube last October, Google has been chasing deals that would give it the right to put mainstream video programming on the site. Just a few weeks ago, Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, seemed confident that this courtship of old-line media companies would prove fruitful.
“These things take time,” Mr. Schmidt said in an interview. “There is lots and lots of talking and we have not hit any walls.”
Now Google has hit a wall.
Viacom, the parent company of MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, filed a wide-ranging lawsuit against Google on Tuesday, accusing it of “massive copyright infringement.” Viacom said it was seeking more than $1 billion in damages and an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from committing further infringement.
Citing the $1.65 billion that Google paid for YouTube, the complaint said that “YouTube deliberately built up a library of infringing works to draw traffic to the YouTube site, enabling it to gain a commanding market share, earn significant revenues and increase its enterprise value.” The complaint was filed in United States District Court in New York.
Google said it was still reviewing the lawsuit but repeated past assertions that copyright law shields it from liability for clips posted by its users.
The lawsuit is the clearest sign yet of the tension between Google and major media companies. With its acquisition of YouTube, Google had high hopes of becoming a central distribution point for online video, dominating the field just as Apple’s iTunes Store leads the market for digital music.
Google plans to combine YouTube’s vast audience with its own mastery of online advertising technology to create a lucrative business whose revenue it will share with large media companies and other content creators.
Those hopes hinge on its ability to strike deals with content owners that will allow it not only to gain rights to programming, but also to insulate itself from any liability for past copyright violations on YouTube.
Google has succeeded in signing licensing deals with smaller content providers and limited agreements with larger ones, like the BBC and the National Basketball Association. But broad agreements with the major networks and Hollywood studios have proved elusive.
As the negotiations have dragged on, major media companies, including the News Corporation and NBC Universal, have grown increasingly frustrated over the proliferation of copyrighted video on YouTube. Some have been in on-and-off discussions to create their own Web site to compete with YouTube. But most continue to talk with Google in an attempt to find a way to be compensated for their material.
Viacom, which last month demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 clips of its programming from the site, has been the most vocal Google critic by far.
In an interview, Viacom’s chief executive, Philippe P. Dauman, declined to say whether Viacom and Google executives had met in recent weeks, but he said the companies had had contacts over the Viacom clips that keep showing up on YouTube.
“Every day we have to scour the entirety of what is available on YouTube, so we have to look for our stuff,” Mr. Dauman said. “It is very difficult for us and places an enormous burden on us.”
― am0n, Saturday, 17 March 2007 13:56 (eighteen years ago)