14 DAY TRIAL // If you thought the battle between Google and Viacom is ended, you were wrong because the two companies are attacking one another with every new occasion. If you didn't know it, let me present the story so far: Viacom, which is the owner of several famous names such as MTV and Comedy Central, demanded YouTube to remove approximately 100.000 clips from the page because it considered the online video sharing service receives traffic without paying for the content that brings it. Trying to avoid a dispute, YouTube agreed and started the removal of this considerable amount of clips.
But that's not all. Viacom was not pleased with the deletion and made one step further: a lawsuit in which it accuses Google of publishing videos without authorization, demanding no less than $1 billion in damages. This is the moment that caused this important trouble, both companies accusing one another every time they had the chance.
Speaking for the reporters at the 25th annual Allen & Co. moguls meeting, Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, said Viacom is a company that tries to improve its popularity using the lawsuits filed against the Internet giants.
"Viacom is a company built from lawsuits, look at their history. Look who they hired as CEO, Philippe Dauman, who was the general counsel for Viacom for 20 years," Eric Schmidt said according to Reuters.
But Viacom is not the only company that accused the Internet giant Google for copyright infringement and required important damages. Take for example Daniela Cicarelli, Ronaldo's ex-wife who sued Google for publishing videos without authorization. Although she lost the lawsuits, she was one of the first persons who took Google to the court.
Every time, the Mountain View company defended itself by talking about the DMCA acts that protects the online video sharing service from pirated content uploaded by its users.