Viacom is pissed

From syfyportal, "It's not clear if Viacom chief Philippe Dauman put his pinky finger to his mouth like Austin Power's Dr. Evil when he named the amount, but it's a doozy.

Viacom, which still owns the rights to the Star Trek movie franchise through its Paramount Pictures division, said it will sue Google-owned YouTube for more than $1 billion, claiming "massive intentional copyright infringement" of its products, CNN reported.

Viacom filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and asked along with damages that YouTube be enjoined from "further violations" contending that some 160,000 clips from Viacom-owned property have appeared on YouTube over the past few years, being viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

It was unclear how Viacom came up with the amount in the lawsuit, but it was clear that if they won such a judgment, it would damage YouTube as a company while helping to fuel Viacom's own similar video site Joost, which plans to launch this summer offering clips from various channels owned by Viacom as well as full-length feature films from Paramount.

"YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on the site," Viacom officials said in a statement after filing the lawsuit. "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."

Last month, Viacom ordered clips from its video products to be removed from YouTube after negotiations to use the clips broke down between the companies.
CBS Corp., which owns the television rights to Star Trek, has taken a different route from its former parent, and established a strategic partnership to place clips on the service beginning last year."