14 DAY TRIAL // The battle between Google and Viacom was at least interesting as it managed to remain in the spotlights due to hot information provided by both sides. If you didn't know, Viacom, the owner of MTV and Comedy Central, demanded YouTube to remove 100.000 clips because the company considered Google receives praises and money without paying for the content provided by other publishers. After the negotiations broke down, YouTube started the removal of the 100.000 videos to avoid a potential copyright infringement. While YouTube was continuously deleting movies, Viacom decided to sue the video service for copyright infringement.
One week ago, Viacom published a large statement concerning the lawsuit filed against Google, the company sustaining that YouTube is removing pornographic clips while their content is still available. Today, the search giant decided to reply to the statement through Michael Kwun, Google Managing Counsel. According to the Google official, Viacom is offending the users that are currently communicating on the Internet because the lawsuit can restrict their access to certain free online activities such as upload videos.
"In February, after negotiations broke down, Viacom requested that YouTube take down more than 100,000 videos. We did so immediately, working through a weekend. Viacom later withdrew some of those requests, apparently realizing that those videos were not infringing, after all. Though Viacom seems unable to determine what constitutes infringing content, its lawyers believe that we should have the responsibility and ability to do it for them. Fortunately, the law is clear, and on our side," the Google official said in the statement published by Washington Post.
Michael Kwun sustained YouTube is based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that allows services to publish videos as long as they comply with the publisher demands, meaning the product is forced to remove clips as long as the provider requires it. Although YouTube agreed to delete Viacom's content, MTV's owner decided to sue Google and require $1 billion in damages.