Viacom's media rivals support the company's lawsuit against Google and YouTube, executives told Bloomberg News. "This is a key issue for our industry, it is time for YouTube to remove unauthorized
material from its site," a Time Warner spokesman said. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has also asked Google to take down unauthorized content, while last week announcing plans to create its own video
rival. The Walt Disney Co. continues to negotiate with YouTube; a company spokesman says the parties are confident of an agreement. CBS Corp., NBC Universal and the BBC all have content agreements
with the video site, subject to their behest.
Google, which purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in November, isn't fazed by its inability to strike content deals with these companies,
partly because, as the company's general counsel Kent Walker says, "YouTube has become even more popular since we took down Viacom's material. We think that's a testament to the draw of the
user-generated content on YouTube." Google confident of the company's legal position; its lawyers say "lawsuits are generally not a very good negotiating tactic with us."
The big
losers here are consumers, says Annette Hurst, a copyright attorney who represented Napster in its landmark copyright suit.
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