Google’s YouTube will defend against Viacom
Responding to Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement suit over video clips on YouTube, Google said Monday that it would not back off, declaring that the law was on its side. “We are not going to let this lawsuit distract us,” Michael Kwun, managing counsel for litigation at Google, told reporters. In its response to the lawsuit, filed Monday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Google said that Viacom’s claims were unfounded and asked for a judgment dismissing the complaint. In March, Viacom, the parent company of MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, sued Google and YouTube, the video sharing site it acquired last year, saying they were deliberately building a business on a library of copyrighted video clips without permission. Earlier this year, Viacom had asked YouTube to take down 100,000 clips that it said infringed on its copyrights.
Google’s court filing gives few new details of its legal thinking, which relies heavily on the so-called “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enacted in 1998. Those provisions generally hold that Web sites’ owners are not liable for copyright material uploaded by others to their site as long as they promptly remove the material when asked to do so by the copyright owner. Viacom said Google’s response misses the mark. “This response ignores the most important fact of the suit, which is that YouTube does not qualify for safe harbor protection under the D.M.C.A.,” Viacom said. “It is obvious that YouTube has knowledge of infringing material on their site, and they are profiting from it.” Mr. Kwun, the Google lawyer, said there had been no talks between Google and Viacom to discuss a settlement. “We feel pretty confident about the case and are ready to take it to court,” he added. I stand expressly on the side of Google – paying 1 billion dollars even if you are a company of Google’s size is just ridiculous.
Source: BBC, NYTimes
Comments(8)
still makes me laugh when i think about Viacom and dr evil …
Go Google!
Let’s hope Google wins!
Viacom is just being bitchy towards Google because they’re gearing up to launch their own answer to YouTube. They probably thought that throwing a large lawsuit at YouTube would cripple it enough so that when they launch Joost, YouTube would be less of a competitor.
Guess they didn’t count on Google calling their bluff. Haha. I hope they lose it, that’ll teach them that bullying tactics don’t work. Greedy bastards.
I wish viacom was a person. I would tie him down and take a dump on his face…
go google go.
viacom needs to stfu and make their own video site. don’t start crying because some other corporation has the brains.
Damn copyright Nazi’s Viacom.
Google + YouTube = Success and revenue. Thank you for your nice entry.