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Viacom Inc. is the parent company of Comedy Central and MTV. Early in 2007, Viacom sued Google Inc., the parent of YouTube, the video sharing website, for copyright infringement. The suit involved the large number of Viacom video clips that users of YouTube have posted online. Google says that it is protected by provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which protects Internet companies from copyright infringement liability by users if they act immediately to remove the offending clips. Philippe Dauman, president and chief executive officer of Viacom, says his company did not want to bring a lawsuit, but started to address the problem by making deals. At one point, Viacom was talking with Google's chairman and chief executive, Eric Schmidt, about licensing agreements to display content on YouTube. What Viacom is concerned about is rewarding the creators of the content, rather than companies that did not create the content. Google, according to Dauman, wanted to have control over all content, the ability to sell advertising in the content, have contact with Viacom's advertisers, and to share revenue. Dauman told Schmidt that if they could not come to an agreement, Google would have to take Viacom's content off the YouTube site. Dauman feels that Google was not helpful or timely in locating or removing Viacom content.
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