http://consumerist.com/2010/03/viacom-youtube-throw-legal-punches-in-copyright-lawsuit.html
Sounds like viacom are being the traditional shady media conglomerate and google are doing the usual edging towards the boundaries of dodginess

Yet another good case to watch, second to IW/Activision.
It's like these companies are all putting on a wild courtroom case for our amusement.

Interesting... a case where I'm on Google/YouTube's side.
The sooner these big conglomerates change their business model to reflect the 21st century, the better.
You might want to pay attention to the BPI vs. everyone in the UK case also.
Digital Economy Bill
Pressure mounts against DEC

The bill will probably go through, it's Mandelson after all. That oily little wretch knows where all the bodies are buried in New Labor and seems to receive extraordinary 'gifts' from the government. He's even a bloody Lord now.

After looking at the title, Harry Hills TV Burp came to mind.

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=google&word2=viacom
knockout!

Surprising how often google shows up as a searched term, don't people know that if you type google INTO google that you can break the internet?

Then I have broken the internet on at least three occasions.

MTV, owned by Viacom, could make a celebrity death match from this which could than be uploaded (by Viacom?) to youtube.

You could consider YouTube the abandonware site of music videos, since MTV doesn't actually show music videos anymore, only shitty reality shows.

Unfortunately another fine example of a company which lost touch with it's past.
It still aims at the youth, but that's the only thing that stayed the same.
If Viacom wins and youtube has to remove a lot of sometimes great MTV vids, it will be a loss.
Personally I don't see how this will help them make more revenue from their copyrighted material (with exception of a possible win in the lawsuit).

Especially since, in many cases, YouTube basically provides free advertising for said material.

I'm 100% on Viacom's side in this. I don't know if you're read it, but in the early days of Youtube the founders conspired to keep as much copyrighted content on as possible in order to boost the value of the company and sell it to the highest bidder. That is fraud of the highest order.
Not only that, but I'm fed up with this freeloading attitude. Like it or not, at the end of the day, this is copyrighted material that Viacom owns, and it's wrong to duplicate it to infinity and view it for free just because you can.
I'm fed up with all the liberal kids who think they should get everything for free, just because they can and anything goes on the Internet.
Say whatever you want, but "they should adapt their business model to the 21st century", at the end of the day, means that they should let you get everything for free.
There is NO working business model with giving everything for free on the Internet. So until there is, there's zero problem with companies protecting their intellectual properties used illicitly.

Although I'm not 100% sure, the copyright issues the lawsuit is about all appeared during the period google is owner.
If the original owner conspired to do what you said they did, that's very lackable behaviour.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's something in their contract with google about that.
As for the 'freeloading attitude', in my country the copyright holders for the music industry signed a deal with youtube.
They get money while youtube can offer it's services here as far as music videos go.
Still occassionally I get an error message stating the video isn't available in my country.
I'm not sure if there's a deal with copyright organizations for video producers.
If you read the article you would have read that google is accusing Viacom of uploaded part of the videos they're sueing youtube over.
If that's true, they have no case as far as those videos go.
"They should adapt their business model to the 21st century" doesn't mean you should get everything for free.
To me it means companies should start to acknowledge that there are no limits or boundaries to distributions like there were in the passed.
If you release something in one country, don't wait a few months before releasing it elsewhere.
If you would live in Europe you would understand that.
There's no reason we should have to wait a few months for movies to appear in cinemas, series being broadcased here or for DVD releases.
Fortunately that's slowly changing as studios are beginning to see that's encouraging people to pirate something they really want to see.
The series Lost is a good example of how it should be.
It's broadcasted here only a few days after it's been broadcasted in the US.
There's no problem with companies protecting their copyrights.
The term intellectual property is debatable though.
EA possibly sueing the creators of South Park over the latest episode is an example why.

And how does any of this apply to Google? Google is not required to police YouTube for infringing copyrighted content; if Viacom finds any of their content posted on YouTube then all they need to do is fire off a DMCA notice to Google and the infringing video will be pulled. As long as Google promptly complies with all such notices (which they do) they are fully in the clear under the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. Viacom is throwing a tantrum because 1) they don't want to actually have to go through the DMCA notification process (they want Google to shoulder all the costs for them) and 2) infringing content or not, they simply want YouTube gone because they want to be the gatekeepers of content and YouTube interferes with this. Amusingly, Viacom has actually posted some of their own content on YouTube, then sent DMCA requests claiming the content was infringing and demanding it be pulled (whether this is simply a case of the legal department not knowing what the marketing department was doing, or whether it was a deliberate attempt to manufacture false evidence for use against YouTube remains to be seen).