Media giant Viacom took its fight to the public that week seeking to outline battle lines in its $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube’s parent, Google. Viacom filed the lawsuit in March 2007 alleging that YouTube purposefully allowed Viacom’s copyrighted subject matter to be distributed on the site. The suit was filed after negotiations amidst Google and Viacom by licensing composition fell apart.

Viacom’s CEO Phillipe Dauman took jabs at his opponent at a San Francisco press conference. He expressed disappointment in Google’s management of YouTube, citing numerous copyright violations still on the site months after negotiations with Viacom.

Was it planned?

While some observers point to a problem in YouTube’s architecture for weeding out and blocking protected substance, others believe YouTube and Google were intentionally lax in keeping such Viacom plums as the Daily Show, South Park, and other TV shows. Google maintains it is working on better filtering software to remove copyright-protected videos.

Dauman said he thinks

Google purposefully allowed the piracy to continue so YouTube would grow. Google did not step in to curtail the copyright infringements until YouTube dominated the market, Dauman said. YouTube has more than 70 million views per month.

In its suit Viacom asked for the release of YouTube user info to track how often its copyrights were violated. Both parties have since agreed to drop that requirement, even though a judge ruled that Google should comply. Some analysts point to that as a sign the companies may be seeking a settlement.

Expensive Litigation

The lawsuit is causing a bleeding of cash — Google’s stock price dropped 12 percent on July 17, in part due to the costs of defending itself in the Viacom suit. Analysts estimate the lawsuit has cost Google tens of millions of dollars and it threatens the viability of YouTube, which is predicting it will fall short of…

Original post by Top Tech News