• by Wayne Friedman , February 5, 2007

With two rebuffs by major media companies in less than a week, YouTube may be reverting to its previous status: troublemaker for established media companies.

Viacom will stop working with the company to help promote its shows. It also asked YouTube to remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips--saying it had violated federal copyright laws. Viacom, however, didn't file a lawsuit.

Less than a week before, 20th-Century Fox served YouTube a subpoena for the names of YouTube users who illegally posted new-season episodes of its hit drama show, "24" and "The Simpsons," some before debuting on the network.

"Filtering tools promised repeatedly by YouTube and Google have not been put in place, and they continue to host and stream vast amounts of unauthorized video," Viacom said in a statement.

"YouTube and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice." Viacom had been negotiating with YouTube to get compensation for the TV show clips that run on the site.

YouTube may not be subjected to federal copyright laws and penalties, as long as it takes down the clips in a timely fashion. YouTube users continue to post illegal clips coming from Viacom's MTV, VH1, and Nickelodeon cable networks, as well as Paramount Pictures. Analysts say YouTube users do this with many copyrighted videos.

In November, YouTube started taking action to correct this. It agreed to delete nearly 30,000 files after the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers complained of copyright infringement.

YouTube has been promising to run the straight and narrow, saying it will cooperate "with all copyright holders to identify and promptly remove infringing content as soon as we are officially notified."

This development hasn't stopped Viacom from working with YouTube's parent company, Google. A deal with MTV Networks division allows the search company's video service to use clips from MTV and its sibling networks under a revenue-sharing agreement.

YouTube has agreements with other media companies, such as CBS, where the user-generated site is used to help promote its shows. CBS says there has been increased viewer interest in its shows because of the deal.