Videosharing site YouTube is being sued for over a billion dollars in damages by Viacom, parent company to popular TV channels MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central.
Viacom claims that almost 160,000 clips of its programming have been uploaded onto YouTube’s site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
Last month Viacom ordered YouTube to remove 100,000 items from its website, and Google said at the time it had complied and removed the unauthorized items. Viacom said it decided to sue the media sharing site after “a great deal of unproductive negotiation” with Google and its YouTube subsidiary.
“Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.”, Viacom added in a statement.