The three-year-long Viacom lawsuit against YouTube and Google, has reached a vital verdict moment, as the case has burst into public sight, with the public release of the briefs of each side filed previously this month. If Google wins, the case ends, if Viacom does, the next phase of trial on damages will be on.

YouTube's early days occupied a lot of shrewd exploitation of copyrighted work, without the permission, according to emails filed with the briefs.

If Viacom wins, the authorities would be curious to see how much damage it would find to have suffered, given Viacom's own use of YouTube. Indeed, it embraced YouTube as a necessary marketing means.

For Viacom to win, the judge should find one of two things to be true. Either that YouTube, at any time previous to May 2008, was behaving adequately like a pirate file sharing service, to be liable for its users' uploads of proprietary content, or that prior to May 2008, YouTube did not always meet the necessities of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's, the safe harbor clause, meaning that it didn't have legal security.

YouTube's position is fundamentally that, stubborn blindness to breach is alright, while Viacom disputes that, it's specifically forbidden.