It’s been awhile since we last heard of a media company banging on YouTube’s doors for some copyright infringement violations. For the past couple of months, YouTube’s seems to be operating silently with most of its publicity hype centered on its quest to generate ample revenue visa-vis its huge daily page views.
Now, here comes an Italian media company, Mediaset, breaking the silence and throwing a whooping $779 million lawsuit against YouTube for allegedly distributing and using its audio and video files illegally.
Mediaset said that YouTube apparently has in its video database around 4,643 Mediaset-owned videos amounting to around 325 hours of broadcasting without getting paid for its rights. Now, if you are a company running a profitable media business, those lost of airing rights will certainly amount to a lot of money lost. Mediaset is also claiming that with the number of hits that its videos are generating, the company is already running at a lost of around 315,672 broadcasting days.
Hence the $799 million worth of copyright infringement case was appropriate to compensate for “immediate damages” that the company has incurred.
And YouTube’s response?
YouTube respects copyright holders and takes copyright issues very seriously,” YouTube said in an e-mailed response. “There is no need for legal action and all the associated costs. 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.
