Viacom is suing YouTube(Google) for copywrite infractions involving the airing of uploaded videos on YouTube's site. Viacom says, "YouTube was intentionally built on infringement and there are countless internal YouTube communications demonstrating that YouTube's founders and its employees intended to profit from that infringement." Actually this is an interesting lawsuit, in the fact that Viacom employees were intentionally uploading videos onto the site. Viacom was uploading these videos to promote their movies and television shows. This is a legal test for who is responsible for the content on a website.
As of this minute, the law states that you are responsible for all the information (postings) on your website or webpage. For instance Facebook, Facebook wouldn't necessarily be held liable for each individual webpage on its service. In that case, you would be liable for any and all postings on "your" site. People don't realize that anything that you post on your MySpace, Twitter, or Facebook, is memorialized forever and you can't necessarily take it back. You could be sued for either slander or libel.
Viacom is asking YouTube(Google) to remove all of the illegal (pirated) videos posted on the YouTube site, even the ones that Viacom itself posted. I do not agree with Viacom in this matter. Not only did they post themselves, but they also received a benefit from the postings on YouTube. I believe they (YouTube) should not be able to post these videos beyond a certain date. They should not have to decipher the videos, and who posted them, from the past. I have included a blog that has many different opinions.
