March 13, 2007: Viacom serves Google and YouTube with a $1 billion federal lawsuit for disregard of intellectual property laws. Viacom claims that over 150,000 clips of its content are on YouTube and have been watched 1.5 bn times.

What if many of these same people were also Viacom’s customers? Is Viacom also suing its customers for straying away? This debate was expected to happen anyway, and it has started off now.

The stakes are high, and in the ring are two of the top players from old media and new media, both with deep pockets and lots of resources, but only one of them has the support of its users. Google. But does that count at all? Well, it depends on the numbers who come forward to speak and the facts and arguments we present. Continue reading How should Google defend against Viacom? →