Some might accuse me of Schadenfreude, but that's just not it. That said, I'm still giddy about the recent news that Viacom has decided to sue Google for $1 Billion.

I posted about this a bit before, but I feel really strongly about it: Google's revenue model with YouTube was based solely on theft. It was immoral, arrogant, and completely wrong, and I'm glad Viacom decided to call their bluff:

"YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site," Viacom said in a statement. "Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws." [link]

Amen.

Don't get me wrong - I think things like YouTube, etc could end up working. Google just went about it in a completely idiotic way: By parking their multi-billion $ company behind a start-up with a flawed business model. That business model: make $$ off of stolen works, and then try to 'entice' the owners of those works into some sort of negotiations for a 'cut' of the proceeds. That's like a guy breaking in to your house and stealing your TV, selling it on the market, and then offering to share profits (even DECENT ones) with you in order to be able to keep stealing your stuff.

Ideally something could probably have been worked out for a revenue sharing model that would benefit both parties - but Google/YouTube went about it in completely the wrong way, and violated copyright. I for one am just glad to see this greedy spirit of theft/stealing put in its place with a colossal lawsuit.