• Associated Press, Tuesday, July 17, 2007 11 AM

Google and Viacom's YouTube-face off heated up last week at the Allen & Company media summit when Google CEO Eric Schmidt vehemently defended his company's policy of taking down copyrighted materials flagged by the owner. Viacom and others believe the Web giant has the resources to filter out copyrighted content altogether, but chooses not to because it benefits from their illegal use. They also complain that the laborious process of copyright identification is both costly and inefficient.

At the summit, Schmidt contended that Viacom was "built on lawsuits ... look at their history," he said, referring to a series of legal battles of a once small movie theater chain to secure the distribution of first-run films. Schmidt added that current CEO Philippe Dauman is a former general counsel of Viacom.

"We have engaged in a lot of litigation at Viacom, of which I have been a primary mover," Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone replied, adding, "The bottom line is I hate to fight...I don't enjoy a battle," Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion for the rampant violation of its copyrights on YouTube. The conflict has huge implications for the future of online video, as its outcome will likely determine how video and other kinds of media are distributed over the Web.

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