Viacom sues Google YouTube for copyright infringement

Viacom sues Google YouTube for copyright infringement

Viacom has finally done what was very much expected. The company has filed a lawsuit against YouTube and parent company Google. They are claiming that the video sharing service is a hub of digital piracy.

The media company is seeking more than USD 1 billion in damages in this lawsuit.

They have filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit claims that the service currently has more than 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom’s entertainment programming. And these clips have been seen illegally by the web users more than 1.5 billion times.

Viacom is the parent company of Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks and a number of cable channels. They have asked the courts or an injunction to halt this mass level digital piracy.

Viacom said in a statement on this lawsuit: “In fact, YouTube’s strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden–and high cost–of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement.”