Lawsuit over YouTube video: It's what everyone's watching

A look at what's at stake in Viacom Inc.'s $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google.

from the March 23, 2007 edition

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SHERMAN OAKS, CALIF. - At an Internet cafe here, Barry Delatto toggles his computer screen from stock prices to e-mail and finds a URL for YouTube, the free website where users can post and watch video clips.

"It's [an e-mail] from my girlfriend," he says, clicking on a clip from the "Colbert Report," a mock-news TV show on Comedy Central. "I better watch this before the courts shut YouTube down. Either that, or make them pay so much nobody will do this anymore."

It's a scene repeated so often – 160,000 free video clips viewed at least 1.5 billion times – that Comedy Central's parent company, Viacom Inc., is asking the courts to make YouTube stop unauthorized postings of copyrighted video.

The suit has been followed by news Thursday that News Corp. and NBC Universal plan to create an online video site stocked with TV shows to compete against Google by controlling how their own shows are watched online. The new idea may launch as early as summer and help News Corp. and NBC from losing advertising dollars that have been siphoned off to the Web.

Viacom's lawsuit, filed March 13 in a US District Court in New York, seeks $1 billion in damages and asks the court to make YouTube, acquired by Google last year, halt the practice.

Much is at stake. Most obvious is billions of dollars in advertising for YouTube and Google. The outcome could also set precedent governing when and how video content crosses from TV screen to computer screen, as well as determine how Delatto and other users post, watch, and share videos online.

At the center of the case is a major federal copyright law: the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It endeavors to strike a balance between "promoting the continued growth and development of electronic commerce and protecting intellectual property rights."

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