41 / 66
Working wi th Google
39
YouTube’s cofounders did not need to worry about the business aspects
of developing YouTube anymore. They could concentrate on being cre-
ative instead.
Google, on the other hand, had a lot of legal problems to worry
about. In March of 2007, just a few months after Google took over,
Viacom International, Inc., sued the company for $1 billion in damages.
Viacom International claimed that YouTube, and Google by extension,
had broken copyright laws by allowing users to easily upload videos that
were already copyrighted by Viacom. The lawsuit lasted many years,
but was finally dismissed in 2010. YouTube had proved that it was doing
everything it could to abide by copyright laws and was not intentionally
allowing users to break those laws. Viacom has tried to appeal this rul-
ing, but has been unsuccessful.
Viacom versus Google was a very important case because it set the
standard for what media is allowed on the Internet in the future. The
Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 protected Google because it
stated that websites could not be sued for copyright infringement as long
as they removed copyrighted content when notified of the violation. You-
Tube has always done its best to abide by the law, both before and after
Google bought it.
PARTNER PROGRAM
In May of 2007, YouTube introduced a way for users to make money
alongside YouTube. Popular videos were given the option of hosting ad-
vertisements that would be displayed before the user video began. For
every person who watched these advertisements, the user who uploaded
the video would receive a cut of the money YouTube received.
About 45 percent of the money made through advertising goes di-
rectly to YouTube, with the other 55 percent going to the person who
uploaded the video. In 2013, the average partner earned about $2 per