• by David Goetzl , March 7, 2007

Acrimony continued between Viacom and Google over the legality and would-be advantages of allowing the programmer's content to be posted on YouTube. Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said his company is better off after requesting that all its copyrighted content be removed from YouTube, while also charging that the video-sharing service failed to fully oblige.

Dauman said that once the clips were taken down--including many from Comedy Central shows such as "The Colbert Report"--Viacom has been able to build traffic on its own Web sites, yielding a financial gain the YouTube postings didn't allow.

"We found traffic increasing back on our own sites," he said at an investor conference. "We're able to monetize [it]. This is high-value traffic"--traffic, he said, that advertisers are willing to pay high CPMs to reach.

"Premium branded advertisers aren't, in my opinion, going to spend a lot of money for the YouTube viewers who are looking at the user-generated content of, you know, a cat going to the bathroom ... we want to provide for our advertisers a quality environment that they can feel comfortable in, that they will pay more for."

Last month, Viacom demanded YouTube remove 100,000 clips from its shows, saying it would distribute them via a competing online service. It would also continue to use its on-air platforms to drive traffic to its own sites, such as MTV Overdrive.

Dauman said YouTube had "purported" to remove all the clips, but "they didn't take all of [them] down, by the way."

An email to a YouTube representative seeking comment was not immediately returned.

Also at the conference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly said media companies such as Viacom should not look at YouTube as a venue for copyright infringement, but a potential revenue source with so many people visiting. "The better opportunity for you is to think of this person as a potential monetizable target," he reportedly said of media giants. Schmidt reportedly said programmers and YouTube should work together to create an ad model benefiting both parties.

Viacom and YouTube were reportedly in negotiations for a content-sharing agreement, but those collapsed and prompted Viacom to ask for a cease-and-desist. "They thought they could take it first, and then talk to us later," Dauman said of YouTube, referring to the period before the talks. "We were patient about it for a while and then ... we said this is hurting us."

Dauman, however, did not rule out eventually making a deal with YouTube.