The media giant's lawsuit may remind many of previous copyright infringement battles. But with Google named in the suit, this one will be differentWhen Viacom sued Google for massive copyright infringement Mar. 13, there was an element of history repeating itself. In this instance it was Sumner Redstone's Viacom and a cadre of lawyers going after a massively popular service—in this case Google's YouTube—that lets customers share their favorite video clips. Observers couldn't help but draw parallels to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its legal battle against an earlier generation of entertainment-sharing services, Napster and Grokster, used by millions to share their own beloved form of entertainment, digital music.
Napster eventually shut down, bankrupted by legal bills and multimillion-dollar settlements with copyright owners, and Grokster also went offline after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it could be held liable for copyright infringements committed by its users (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/28/05, "A Supreme Slap at Grokster & Co."). But for anyone fretting that YouTube may be headed for anything resembling the same fate as the peer-to-peer file-sharing services, the message is simple: Google is no Napster.
Read More
