Top > Webmaster > 2007 > February > 2007-02-08

YouTube Asked to Remove Viacom Content

Ever since it was bought by Google for $1.65 billion a few months ago, video sharing website YouTube has had to deal not only with the business fame that came along with the deal, but with lawsuits and copyright issues as well. The latest of these came last week, when giant media company Viacom asked YouTube to remove about 100,000 unauthorized clips from the site. Viacom is owner of successful and widely available YouTube clips from MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and the Paramount Pictures. This is the second request of this sort by Viacom.

The statement from Viacom was rather harsh, although it stopped short of filing a lawsuit. It said "it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users." As long as it complies with such requests to remove video clips, the law will protect the company. Filtering tools such as are requested by Viacom to control unauthorized videos are not necessary.

YouTube is also threatened with legal action by other companies who are enraged about copyright infringement. It said in a statement that it is willing to act on any such request as the one from Viacom. It will cooperate "with all copyright holders to identify and promptly remove infringing content as soon as we are officially notified." The videos in the center of the argument include Comedy Central?s The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and South Park, and MTV shows such as Next, Nickelodeon`s SpongeBob SquarePants and VH1`s Storytellers.