YouTube Legal Bombshell: Viacom Uploaded Clips to YouTube, Then Tried to Hide Its Tracks

From DailyTech: Google dropped a bombshell today. It claims that Viacom, who is currently suing its video sharing site YouTube, knowingly and purposefully promoted the uploading of Viacom's copyrighted works to the site, trying to make them look like pirated copies.

Viacom's suit against YouTube has been smoldering in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York since March 2007. After Viacom failed in multiple bids to acquire the video sharing site, it filed suit seeking $1B USD in damages from YouTube's current owner, internet mogul Google. Viacom accuses YouTube of allowing 160,000 infringed video clips to be posted.

As the opening briefs of the case were just unsealed and released to the public today, Google has posted a blog blasting Viacom and saying that the lawsuit threatens the future of the internet.

Writes Google:

"With some minor exceptions, all videos are automatically copyrighted from the moment they are created, regardless of who creates them. This means all videos on YouTube are copyrighted -- from Charlie Bit My Finger, to the video of your cat playing the piano and the video you took at your cousin’s wedding. The issue in this lawsuit is not whether a video is copyrighted, but whether it's authorized to be on the site. The DMCA (and common sense) recognizes that content owners, not service providers like YouTube, are in the best position to know whether a specific video is authorized to be on an Internet hosting service."

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