NEW YORK -- Media giant Viacom Inc. today sued online video site YouTube Inc. and its corporate parent, Google Inc., accusing both of "brazen disregard" for its copyrighted shows and movies.
The civil suit, filed this morning in a federal court in Manhattan, alleged that YouTube had become a place where unauthorized copies of Viacom's television shows — including children's shows such as "SpongeBob SquarePants" and adult fare such as "South Park," "The Colbert Report" and "MTV Unplugged" — are regularly posted and watched.
The lawsuit also sought an injunction barring Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement. Viacom contended in its 27-page complaint that nearly 160,000 unauthorized video clips of Viacom's programming had been posted on YouTube and viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
The New York-based media company also said YouTube failed to take "reasonable precautions" to halt the rampant infringement on its site, which was created for people to share their amateur videos but quickly became known for Hollywood programming, such as the "Saturday Night Live" skit, "Lazy Sunday." Viacom accused YouTube of deliberately amassing a vast library of unlicensed works to draw traffic to its website.
"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," said Viacom in a statement. "Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and in obvious conflict with copyright laws."
Viacom asked the court to find that YouTube's behavior constituted "willful" infringement, a finding that would allow Viacom to claim a maximum penalty of $150,000 for each bootlegged copy of its television shows. Viacom claims that it has identified more than 150,000 unauthorized copies of its shows, which have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
"We have not received the lawsuit but are confident that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders and believe the courts will agree," Google said in a statement. "YouTube is great for users and offers real opportunities to rights holders: the opportunity to interact with users; to promote their content to a young and growing audience; and to tap into the online advertising market."
Viacom last month demanded that YouTube take down 100,000 copies of shows from its cable networks, which include Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and MTV, and executives of both companies have since been taking verbal potshots at one another. Viacom said today that it turned to the courts after "a great deal of unproductive negotiation."
YouTube said it would "certainly not let this suit become a distraction to the continuing growth and strong performance of YouTube and its ability to attract more users, more traffic and build a stronger community."
News of the massive lawsuit sent Google shares down $4.80, or 1.06%, to $449.95 in late morning trading on the Nasdaq. Viacom share, meanwhile, were up 56 cents or 1.42% to $40.11 on the New York Stock Exchange.
