• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, March 13, 2007

Setting the stage for a legal showdown over the limits of copyright law in the age of video-sharing, Viacom today filed a federal lawsuit against Google/YouTube.

Viacom has a litany of complaints against YouTube, stemming from the appearance of "more than 150,000 unauthorized clips" from Viacom-owned TV shows and movies that have surfaced on the site.

For one, Viacom alleges that YouTube has profited from the copyrighted clips, using them to draw an audience. "YouTube deliberately built up a library of infringing works to draw traffic to the YouTube site, enabling it to gain a commanding market share, earn significant revenues, and increase its enterprise value."

Additionally, Viacom grouses that when it demands that YouTube remove specific clips, they tend to resurface -- sometimes within hours -- uploaded by other users.

And Viacom gripes that YouTube has the capability to weed out infringing content, but is only deploying that technology selectively, for companies it's forged deals with. "YouTube has deliberately withheld the application of available copyright protection measures in order to coerce rights holders to grant it licenses on favorable terms," states the complaint.

But, while Viacom obviously aims to show that YouTube has treated it unfairly, it's not at all clear that the media giant has the law on its side. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act arguably protects companies like YouTube from copyright infringement suits as long as they remove infringing content when the owner complains.

Viacom gripes that it shouldn't have to continually enforce its copyright, but the DMCA appears to put the burden of enforcement on the owner in these situations. Of course, the act has enough fine print to leave room for argument, but Viacom can expect a long, uphill battle.