The world of copyright lawsuits is a messy and often stupid one.  One company sues another company over a copyright of something that may or may not be valid.  In the case of Google’s YouTube versus Viacom, the company itself might be at fault.  Viacom says YouTube is “a rogue enabler of content theft.”  However, that might not be true, because Viacom uploaded its own clips to YouTube, then served itself with takedown notices.  Apparently nobody thought to keep records of what the company itself uploaded.  That is because Viacom is short-sighted and doesn’t know enough about its audience to enjoy free publicity from viral videos.

Any decent judge will take one look at this lawsuit and send the two sides to arbitration, or just throw the whole thing out and keep the status quo.  What this is really about is that, before Google bought YouTube, Viacom tried to.  After Viacom couldn’t get in bed with Google as a co-owner, they took YouTube to court and sued them for a billion dollars, rather than sign off on a $590 million dollar content license agreement.  Now they want to punish Google for having deeper pockets and no desire to share.

Viacom better sign on before Google TV hits, otherwise they might miss the boat permanently.

Image: SlashGear

Tags: YouTube, Viacom, copyright lawsuit, illegal video uploads, copyright infringement, lawsuits, sour grapes, billion-dollar lawsuit, streaming video lawsuit

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