Google Spent $100M Defending Viacom Lawsuit

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Lawsuits are never cheap, even if you're on the winning side. But not many cost as much as Viacom's lawsuit against Google. The search giant won before trial, and even so Google spent $100 million defending themselves. Incidentally, Viacom is appealing the ruling, so it's not even over yet. Perhaps it's no wonder our rights are vanishing online when it takes $100M to protect just one of them."

Comments

Ask Phil Zimmerman

[GPLDAN]

He spent every cent he had, and went into deep deep debt, trying to keep out of jail for a prosecution orchestrated by RSA as a political favor payback by the US government.

Re:A possible fix:

[Theaetetus]

And move to a non-profit court system. Some jurisdictions figured out they could attract dollars by being attractive venues for lawsuits.

That has nothing to do with the court system - it actually loses money on each case, whether patent, criminal, or civil. However, the city of Marshall, Texas makes a lot of money on patent suits, with lots of expensive hotels and restaurants for out of towners. Are you going to suggest banning capitalism in towns with courthouses? Obviously not.
Forum shopping is bad for many reasons, but not the one you suggest.

What about Viacom?

[hannson]

I'm wondering how much Viacom spent on that lawsuit.

Re:A possible fix:

[h4rr4r]

A simple solution would be to not require people to travel for these sort of court matters. Everything can be done by a teleconference between the parties, each at a courthouse local to them.

go tell it to the DMCA buddy

[voss]

As much as I disliked the DMCA, the safe-harbor provision has done its job.

Google didn't violate peoples copyrights. The individual uploaders may or may not have,
according to the varying nuances of fair use. The benefits of youtube far outweigh
the theoretical loss of revenue.

Google spent a 100m not defending its good name but to set a legal precedent and defend the value of its company.
  Once the legal precedent has been set, the cost of defending these suits will drop a great deal.

Of Google will claim the entire 100m as a tax writeoff.

Re:go tell it to the DMCA buddy

[RobertM1968]

As much as I disliked the DMCA, the safe-harbor provision has done its job.

Google didn't violate peoples copyrights. The individual uploaders may or may not have, according to the varying nuances of fair use. The benefits of youtube far outweigh the theoretical loss of revenue.

Google spent a 100m not defending its good name but to set a legal precedent and defend the value of its company. Once the legal precedent has been set, the cost of defending these suits will drop a great deal.

Of Google will claim the entire 100m as a tax writeoff.

Screw that! I am very happy with the amount Google spent...

*IF* Google remembers this part of the DMCA: 512(f)

(f) Misrepresentations.— Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section—
(1) that material or activity is infringing, or
(2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.

Inotherwords, Viacom owes Google their court costs, expenses AND the expenses related to disabling/removing the content. After all, Viacom knowingly had content removed that they posted or authorized for posting - that's a knowing violation right there - not to mention trying to use the DMCA for an "after the fact, the DMCA has already been satisfied on the other issues" attack.

If memory serves, there are other sections as well that spell out some pretty nice (errr... nasty) damages that Google could be eligible for. So... I'd rather see the full ball game becoming a win for Google, instead of just the first couple innings. That would be a much better precedent. No longer would the **AA groups be seeding content to use to try to catch others, no longer would they recklessly send takedown notices for content they dont have the right to do so.

Full court press Google!!! Go for the jugular!!!

Re:A possible fix:

[Theaetetus]

And is the jury at a third courthouse?

Do they have a jury for the pre-trial? If these are settled before they go to trial, then there should be no jury involved.

So, the suggestion is that they should do pre-trial matters via teleconference? They already do. Not unusual.

Plus, really, do you think the majority, or even a significant amount, of the $100 million cost was the airfare and hotels? Really?

Re:Legal ridiculousness

[nine-times]

"Loser pays" sounds good when you imagine the "good guy" is getting sued and he racks up a bunch of legal bills winning against frivolous lawsuits, but what about when the whole thing is turned around?

Like lets say McDonald's was putting neurotoxins into Happy Meals and my child becomes permanently disabled because of it. I sue McDonald's, and they hire millions of dollars worth of lawyers who trounce my cheap lawyer. Now I'm on the hook for millions of dollars in legal fees?

Or is that not how it works?

Re:A possible fix:

[iamhassi]

"Better solution: make better laws, appoint better judges."

It's not the laws, this was a lawsuit that didn't even enter a courtroom. I can sue anyone for anything: if I knew your name and address I could sue you right now for... oh, let's say slander and you'd have to shell out $$$ or be found guilty. Oh sure you could counter sue saying the lawsuit has no basis and might get your money back, but you'd still have to shell out the $$$ first just to go to court.

Legal system is no better: without any proof or evidence at all I could accuse anyone of assault and the police will go arrest them and put them in jail and maybe the next day they could talk to a judge and get out of jail after paying thousands in bail. That's what this women did. She sent fake harassing text messages to herself and her ex-boyfriend was arrested three times before the police finally investigated to see that all the text messages were sent close to where the woman worked. Each time he was arrested he had to pay thousands in bail money and now has a police record for harassment that he has to try and clear up.

The US legal system is horrible.

Re:A possible fix:

[interkin3tic]

Are you going to suggest banning capitalism in towns with courthouses?

If it will allow me to continue watching videos of cats doing cute things, people falling down in funny ways, breakdancing, and all the other silly but entertaining things I see on youtube, then I'll suggest that yes, communism socialism anarchy or whatever in Marshall Texas is just fine for me personally. Cede it to North Korea for all I care, just don't let Viacom win.

(I should explicitly mention that I am not a lawyer, not from Texas, and am not serious)