Viacom Says The Google Suit Is Still On
- by Gavin O'Malley @mp_gavin, October 17, 2007
"It doesn't have any impact," said Viacom spokesman Jeremy Zweig. "Or at least it's very premature to try and figure out the impact it could have on the litigation."
Upon its launch, the content-fingerprinting technology would resolve the entire copyright issue, Google attorney Philip Beck said at the end of July.
"We believe it goes beyond any legal disputes," Beck said regarding the technology, during a preliminary hearing before U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton.
Although he welcomed the technology, Viacom attorney Donald Verrilli then characterized the fix as too little, too late. "We'd have been a lot happier if they'd put this in place when they launched," he said during the scheduling conference.
This week, Mike Fricklas, Viacom General Counsel, offered a slightly more conciliatory response: "We're delighted that Google appears to be stepping up to its responsibility and ending the practice of profiting from infringement."
Yet, according to Zweig, Viacom is still focused on the matter of past damages.
"The new technology obviously has no bearing on the past," Zweig said, adding: "And we don't even know if the technology works yet."
In addition, Google's new content-fingerprinting tool cannot block users from posting potentially infringing content, and it requires that media companies like Viacom spend valuable time and man hours uploading content to Google's database.
Google on Monday said nine media companies have been testing the technology, including Time Warner and Walt Disney Co.
In March, Viacom sued Google--which acquired YouTube last year--for copyright infringement "on a massive scale." The company had then asked YouTube to take down 100,000 of its clips.
The two companies are presently knee-deep in deposition and discovery as they attempt to determine just how many of Viacom's copyrighted clips were streamed on YouTube. This deposition period is expected to go on for many months to come, Zweig said.
