Viacom Launches Billion Dollar Suit Against Youtube

Viacom has filed a $1 billion copyright lawsuit against YouTube and corporate owner Google. The lawsuit marks a sharp escalation of long-simmering tensions between Viacom and YouTube and represents the biggest confrontation to date between a major media company and the hugely popular site, which Google bought in November for $1.76 billion. In the lawsuit, Viacom says YouTube "harnessed technology to willfully infringe copyrights on a huge scale" and had "brazen disregard" of intellectual property laws.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/technology/14viacom.html