IV. The Players

The plaintiff, Viacom, creates a great deal of entertainment. Viacom owns MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Black Entertainment Television, and Paramount.21 They create and produce hundreds of video productions that are protected by copyright law.22 Google, of course, is the company that began as an Internet search engine and purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in the fall of 2006.23 YouTube is the video sharing website that allows users to upload and view videos in a digital format.24 Although a lot of the videos are produced by amateurs and can be classified as user-generated content, many are short clips of commercial videos, copied by individuals from satellite television, cable, and DVDs purchased on the consumer market.25 Individuals copy these clips and then upload them to the YouTube site. Many of the videos fall into the “viral video” category,26 and some are quite funny.27 YouTube is especially popular with the younger crowd: high school students, college students, and presumably even law students.28