Viacom has filed a lawsuit against Google’s video-sharing site, YouTube.

According to Viacom, Google's YouTube permits users to upload over 100,000 video clips from Viacom-owned systems and movie studios, together with BET, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Pictures.

Filed in U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Viacom's court case has claimed $1 billion in damages.

Meanwhile, Google claims that Viacom employees and its marketing associates uploaded "a host of clips" from Viacom TV shows movies to YouTube, though complaining about their emergence on the video site in public.

Google said, “Given the broad scope of marketing, YouTube could not be charged with knowledge of infringement merely because it came across a video that was clearly from a professionally produced television show or movie”.

According to the court documents, Viacom tried to acquire YouTube in 2006, but it was actually Google which took over YouTube for $1.65 billion in October 2006.

YouTube Chief Counsel, Zahavah Levine states that the safe havens in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) shields online services such as YouTube from copyright charges, if the services eliminate unapproved data once it is informed of its existence on their website. Levine also asserted that content owners like Viacom are geared up better than service providers such as YouTube to control their copyrighted content online.