Viacom Settles YouTube Copyright Dispute

Viacom has settled its long-time, 7-year-old copyright $1 billion lawsuit with Google's YouTube. It's the one in which  YouTube users were allow to put up TV content from Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” and “South Park.”

The lawsuit stemmed from activities during 2005 and 2008. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

For many analysts, this is part of the old YouTube -- since both companies agreed some time ago to pull down unauthorized TV content. Also, Viacom has started up approved channels on YouTube that promote MTV and Comedy Central TV shows.

Court decisions and other company agreements on copyright content and digital platforms, including YouTube, have deemed it not responsible for copyright violations when its users post/upload video content -- if they don’t explicitly encourage them.

More importantly, it lets copyright holders take down that video and other content.

Google won a major victory against the suit in 2010. Last April, a federal judge threw out the case for a second time. The Viacom-Google lawsuit was moving toward another appeal.

In a statement the companies said: "Google and Viacom today jointly announced the resolution of the Viacom vs. YouTube copyright litigation. This settlement reflects the growing collaborative dialogue between our two companies on important opportunities, and we look forward to working more closely together."

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1 comment about "Viacom Settles YouTube Copyright Dispute".
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  1. Paul Robinson from Viridian Development Corporation, March 22, 2014 at 7:37 p.m.

    Someone on Viacom finally came to the realization that the law clearly is on YouTube's side, and frankly, if people are watching the show on YouTube, Viacom can make extra revenue at absolutely no cost to them by allowing YouTube to include ads. YouTube pays all the costs of hosting the content and it costs Viacom nothing, and gets a cut of the ad revenue. Or Viacom could have kept fighting and would have lost and spent a lot of money for nothing.

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