A $1 billion dollar lawsuit against video-sharing website YouTube threatens internet freedom, according to its owner Google.The suit, filed by American media conglomerate Viacom, whose assets include Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks and Comedy Central, was filed against YouTube for its alleged inability to keep copyrighted material off its site.
The Associated Press reported that court documents submitted by Google to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan claim the action "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information" over the web and that YouTube "goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works".
The search engine's legal team also maintained that YouTube had been faithful to the requirements of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and that they responded properly to claims of infringement.
Viacom disagreed that either firm had lived up to the standard and said that they had done "little or nothing" to stop infringement.
The media conglomerate originally started its legal action against YouTube and Google last year, filing an amended version last month, which identified more than 150,000 incidents of alleged copyright infringement, including clips from programmes such as South Park, MTV Unplugged and SpongeBob SquarePants.
Viacom is asking for damages for the unauthorised viewing of its programming and says the tally represented only a fraction of the content on YouTube that violates its copyrights.
"The availability on the YouTube site of a vast library of the copyrighted works of plaintiffs and others is the cornerstone of defendants' business plan," a Viacom representative told the Associated Press.
According to the BBC, earlier this month Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone told Dow Jones: "When we filed this lawsuit, we not only served our own interests, we served the interests of everyone who owns copyrights they want protected."
He added: "We cannot tolerate any form of piracy by anyone, including YouTube...they cannot get away with stealing our products."
For its part, Google said the only way the legal action would be resolved was in court.
Google's Vice President of Content Partnerships David Eun was quoted by BBC News as saying: "We're going all the way to the Supreme Court. We've very clear about it."
After the legal action was first started, YouTube launched an anti-piracy tool that checks uploaded videos against the original content in an effort to flag piracy.
