14 DAY TRIAL // Did you count them? How many copyright infringement cases are involving Google and the popular online video sharing platform? The correct answer is: many. A huge number, to be more specific. Since it was acquired by the Mountain View company in October 2005 for $1.65 billion, YouTube was assaulted by legal problems, most of them being actually copyright infringement cases. It all started with Daniela Cicarelli, Ronaldo's ex-wife who sued the online video sharing platform for publishing private videos showing her and her boyfriend. Recently, the case was officially closed after Google won it and Daniela was required to pay the lawyers and all the taxes.
Recently, the media giant Viacom, the owner of MTV and Comedy Central, filed a complaint against Google, accusing the Mountain View company of copyright infringement. In fact, Viacom first demanded the removal of 100.000 clips from YouTube because it considered Google makes money for the content offered by other companies without paying for it.
After the removal was started, Viacom decided to sue Google and require no less than $1 billion in damages. However, the popular video sharing platform has always been protected by the DMCA acts which states that a free service is protected by this type of complaints since the content is uploaded by its users.
But Google is often accused by other media companies of not developing a solution to block all these copyright infringement clips. In fact, the search giant has been working on it since October, the same month of the YouTube acquisition. The only problem was that it avoided to release it because it tried to make it more powerful and more efficient against illegal materials. However, it seems like the feature "Claim Your Content" is on its way to YouTube as the Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that it's scheduled for this summer.