Viacom sues Google over YouTube clips, Google says suit 'threatens the Web'

Viacom has re-filed its lawsuit against Google for YouTube's alleged infringement of copyright laws. Google's lawyers have replied that the suit threatens Internet freedom.

The year-old legal battle between Viacom and Google is intensifying. Viacom has re-filed the $1 billion lawsuit against Google in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. It said

YouTube consistently allows unauthorized copies of popular television programming and movies to be posted on its Web site and viewed tens of thousands of times. We have identified more than 150,000 unauthorized clips of copyrighted programming —including "SpongeBob SquarePants," "South Park" and "MTV Unplugged" episodes and the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" — that had been viewed "an astounding 1.5 billion times."

Google lawyers on the other hand say that they abide by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and whenever there was a dispute over copyright they removed the material immediately from the website.They said

Viacom’s complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, political and artistic expression.

The battle between Viacom and Google is the latest one in a string of cases filed by broadcasters against websites. While media companies perceive Internet as a broadcasting medium, video sharing sites such as Youtube view it as a communicating medium.