Entertainment Giant Viacom which owns MTV and Nickelodeon, says YouTube is showing its shows illegally and for the privilege is going to attempt to sue YouTube for a cool Billion Dollars.
Viacom alleges that about 160,000 unauthorised clips of its programmes have been loaded onto YouTube’s site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
As well as more than $1bn in damages, the legal action seeks an injunction to prevent what Viacom calls “massive intentional copyright infringement”.
“YouTube’s strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site,” said Viacom in a statement.
“There is no question that YouTube and Google are continuing to take the fruit of our efforts without permission..Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.”