Google will take Viacom suit to Supreme Court
Google is willing to fight Viacom all the way to the Supreme Court in the companies' legal battle over YouTube and pirated videos, but Viacom is taking a hard line of its own, executives from the companies said Wednesday.
David Eun, Google's vice president of content partnerships, told Dow Jones Newswires that Google has no plan to resolve the Viacom case outside court. "We're going all the way to the Supreme Court," Eun said. "We're very clear about it."
Separately, Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone told Dow Jones he's standing up for broader principles.
"When we filed our lawsuit, we not only served our own interests, we served the interests of everyone who owns copyrights that they want protected," said Redstone. "We cannot tolerate any form of piracy by anyone, including YouTube...they cannot get away with stealing our products."
Viacom sued Google for "massive intentional copyright infringement" in 2007, seeking more than $1 billion in damages.
At stake in the fight is a key part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the 1998 law that shields Web site owners from copyright infringement involving material published by users. The "safe harbor" provision in the law can protect against infringement claims as long as copyrighted material is removed upon notification.
After the suit, YouTube launched an antipiracy tool that checks uploaded videos against the original content in an effort to flag piracy.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank.
