Viacom sues Google for $1bn over YouTube clips

Viacom on Tuesday slapped Google and YouTube with a lawsuit accusing the wildly popular video-sharing Web site of "massive intentional copyright infringement" and seeking $1bn in damages.

The complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York contends that nearly 160,000 unauthorised clips of Viacom's entertainment programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Viacom said it has asked the court for an injunction ordering a halt to the alleged copyright infringement in addition to the billion-dollar payout.

In a statement, Viacom blasted what it deemed YouTube's "clearly illegal" business model, riding on advertising sales and traffic tied to "unlicensed content". The media giant accused YouTube of building "a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google".

"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," Viacom said in a statement.

The suit is the culmination of what the New York-based company called "unproductive" negotiations with the Web giants. In early February, Viacom asked YouTube and parent Google to remove all offending clips and said the companies had agreed to pull down more than 100,000 videos produced by Viacom properties, including MTV Networks, Comedy Central, BET and VH-1.

Google was not immediately available for comment.