Viacom sues YouTube, Google, for more than 1 billion dollars

March 13, 2007

Viacom has announced that they are suing YouTube, and its owner Google, for more than 1 billion dollars. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Viacom claims that YouTube has near 160,000 of their videos on their website without their permission, which they say is a "massive intentional copyright infringement."

Viacom had negotiations with YouTube for several months, which ended unsuccessfully. The lawsuit was filed after Viacom had asked YouTube to remove 100,000 videos that belonged to them in February. They also claim that YouTube has made profits by "advertising off of unlicensed content." Neither YouTube's nor Google's representatives have yet commented on the situation and lawsuit. Wikinews is one of the media outlets which has placed a request for comment.