Viacom International Inc. vs. Youtube Inc.

In 2007, the company Viacom International sued Google-owned company, YouTube, claiming that it engaged in extensive copyright infringement. They claimed that YouTube had allowed users to upload videos that were strictly owned by Viacom. There were over 150,000 clips taken from the Viacom website and published onto YouTube, and during the time that these clips were online at YouTube, they were collectively viewed over 1.5 billion times.

Viacom has a policy with copyrights, and they believed that YouTube deliberately breached this policy by "performing, displaying, and reproducing" the copyrighted works of Viacom. YouTube on the other hand claimed that it did not infringe on any of the copyright regulations of Viacom, and that they did nothing wrong.

The court case ended with Viacom winning, and because they did not seek any damages from Google, the judge warranted that the materials be returned back to Viacom, as well as the details on all of the people who had watched the videos, like the trafficking reports, which caused problems of its own. This court decision caused people to be concerned with the fact that the website could find direct individuals based on the IP addresses, as well as the time viewed, and the login name. Many criticized the ruling saying that it was a "setback to privacy rights" however the judge maintained the decision saying that Google was required to give all of the information. Eventually Viacom and YouTube came to the decision to keep the individual's privacy, and that YouTube would hand over materials anonymously.

Although the court case was very long and confusing, and is still somewhat in the news, it demonstrates that even very well-known companies can get into trouble through simple copyright issues. Stealing others' work is always judged harshly, and it is crucial that companies and individuals be careful when citing or attempting to use works of others. I thought this court case was interesting because it was with companies so well-known. As a viewer of this case, I would have thought that YouTube never would have wanted to deal with a copyright issue like this, however because they thought there was no issue with copyright infringement, they continued, but eventually did get into trouble and had to remove the clips from their website.