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Viacom Sues Google for "clearly illegal" business model -- its a growing pattern

Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2007-03-13 12:14

The WSJ is reporting that Viacom has sued Google for $1b in damages for stealing its copyrighted content.

  • "YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google," Viacom said in a press release. "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."

So what is the significance of this suit? It is another big evidence point in an obvious pattern of illegal activities.

  1. Viacom as a TV broadcaster makes the fifth different industry segment to sue Google for theft of their property.
  2. The Motion Picture Association has sued Google over aiding and abetting the piracy of films by promoting clearly illegal activities of sites like EasyDownloadCenter.com.
  3. Trademark owners have sued Google for selling their brands as keywords to competitors creating brand confusion and harm.
  4. Book publishers and authors have sued Google for copyright infringement for digitizing copyrighted books for search.
  5. Newspapers have sued Google over illegally using their headlines and lead paragraphs and undermining readership and purchase of newspapers.

Given that a reported 14% of all searches are generated by click fraud according to Click Forensics, it is only a matter of time before advertisers to wake up and see that they have been defrauded and overcharged.

  • I know of no other industry that tolerates a 14% fraud rate.

I have repeatedly blogged on Google's increasingly illegal enterprise -- whose business model is to create an advertising audience by using the intellectual property of others without compensation. In simple terms that's theft.  

Bottom line: The evidence is powerful and mounting: Google steals.

A list of links to my pervious blogs on this topic follow:

"Googleism: Cheating for the masses" http://www.precursorblog.com/node/312

Evidence mounts Google's model is aligned with illegal activities: http://www.precursorblog.com/node/292

"Google's Hypocritic Oath" http://www.precursorblog.com/node/288

"Nothing neutral about search fraud" http://www.precursorblog.com/node/276

"Is Google-YouTube a politically neutral gateway to Internet content and video?" http://www.precursorblog.com/node/274

"Search peeping, Does Google respect Americans privacy? http://www.precursorblog.com/node/207

"The rise of Googleism: Whats yours is ours" http://www.precursorblog.com/node/203

NYT article that Google discriminates against small websites" http://www.precursorblog.com/node/201

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