Recently it seems as though not a day goes by without Google getting sued by somebody - or at least it feels that way. Already engaged in a catty fight with Viacom over YouTube's mighty collection of some 100,000 unauthorised copyrighted videos, the last thing the popular search firm needs is yet another lawsuit.Unfortunately there's a new one on the cards. Mediaset isn't aiming quite as high as Viacom's demand for $1 billion in damages, but $800 million (£403m) is hardly a moderate price tag. The suit is one of many resulting from the growing intolerance of many broadcasters that find their copyrighted material illegally distributed by the hugely-popular YouTube.
The Italian broadcasting firm started its legal proceedings on Wednesday 30 July, saying that an audit it carried out in June on the video site discovered 4,643 video files unlawfully displayed. This equated to around 325 hours of material.
In a statement, Mediaset said: "With the information that has come to light and the quantity of . . . files illegally on the site, it is possible to calculate that the group's three channels have lost 315,672 audience viewing days."
YouTube responded with a statement saying: "There is no need for legal action. We prohibit users from uploading infringing material and we cooperate with all copyright holders to identify and promptly remove infringing content as soon as we are officially notified."
Google is getting itself further and further into the bad books of various broadcasters over copyright issues. Companies are becoming increasingly annoyed with the internet giant's usage of their content without agreeing proper terms of use.
YouTube's rivals, MySpace, Dailymotion and Veoh have all undertaken such agreements, leaving YouTube as the black sheep of the video sites. That said, it still remains the most popular sheep in the video-portal-flock.
