loving the dot com

Everyone knows that it’s been coming for a while, and it finally has. YouTube has been served with the biggest lawsuit yet in relation to copyright infringement. Viacom, who own MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, Comedy Central, and others; reckon that YouTube’s constant disregard for copyright law has gone far enough - stating that over 160,000 clips are listed on the site completely unauthorised - and have been viewed a total of more than 1.5 billion times.

Viacom states that YouTube has deliberately not acted to combat copyright infringement in order to drive up traffic statistics and sell more advertising space, however YouTube’s owner, Google disagree with this and is reportedly confident that YouTube has properly satisfied the requirements of copyright law.

Ever since the search giant Google bought the video sharing giant YouTube last year for a whopping $1.65 Billion it has been desperately working with content providers to secure deals which would allow it to legally broadcast content, without fear of such lawsuits coming about. However, a public forum such as this where users can upload their own means copyright infringement is a sure thing.

The sheer size of this case could cause a lot of problems for YouTube - and any other sites currently sharing videos - if it rules in favour of Viacom.

Watch this space.

Sources: [1] [2]