The main Italian commercial television network, Mediaset, which was founded by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and is still controlled by him, has sued Google Inc. for at least 500 million euros ($779 million) in damages. The lawsuit, filed with Rome civil court, claims that Mediaset found at least 4,643 video clips on YouTube which contain its copyrighted material, upon a check on June 10 this year.

Mediaset alleges "illegal distribution and commercial use of audio and video files," claiming that it the group's three TV channels lost 315,672 audience viewing days. The advertising revenues on these hours will be calculated and added to the 500 million euros ($779 million) in damages.

The lawsuit with subsequent appeals may probably take a few years in Italy. Another European media company, France's largest commercial broadcaster TF1 TFFP.P is demanding 100 million euros from YouTube.

YouTube released a short but to-the-point statement about the Mediaset lawsuit:

There is no need for legal action and all the associated costs. We prohibit users from uploading infringing material, and we co-operate with all copyright holders to identify and promptly remove infringing content as soon as we are officially notified.

Here in the United States, Viacom sued Google demanding $1 billion. Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube was initially filed last year, but was re-filed in a modified form last month. According to Viacom, Google should get more involved in finding ways to stop users from uploading copyrighted materials, seeing that at this point YouTube’s only measure for this problem enables owners to complain about a certain post and block it from being viewed.

It appears that suing YouTube over copyrighted clips is a new trend. Google might get different results in the United States and in Europe, where the legal system is significantly different. If YouTube will be hit hard, will it be the end of free-for-all video sharing?

Keeping copyrighted content out is plainly impossible. There are inconvenient ways of keeping most of copyrighted stuff out, but not all.

There is also the issue of whether viewers can be held liable for looking at copyrighted content on sites such as YouTube. This is an important issue, considering that Viacom managed to get their greasy hands on the 12 terabytes of logs which detail everything users watched on YouTube. Fortunately, the log was anonymized after a strong reaction from privacy groups.

Copyright infringement in the United States apparently states that users are liable when they illegally copy works, even if they're not aware that this is wrong, or that the work is protected by copyright, Chris Soghoian of CNET reports. This means that clicking, even by mistake, on a clip which is copyrighted, makes you a potential target of a $750 fine.