The Viacom – YouTube battle has been in the spotlight for over a year now, but after Viacom renewed its accusations last Friday, there was one thing everyone expected to see or hear: Google’s reaction to the $1 billion lawsuit for copyright infringement. And here it goes: Viacom interferes with the way people exchange information, news, entertainment, as well as political and artistic expressions.

In March 2007, Viacom initially filed a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against YouTube, and consequently its owner, Google, for “massive intentional” copyright infringement of Viacom’s entertainment properties.

Viacom complained that unauthorized copies of its copyrighted works are posted everyday on YouTube and are viewed tens of thousands of times, and Google does absolutely nothing to stop the copyright infringement, instead engaging in promoting and inducing the infringement.

However, Google said Viacom goes against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which encourages the development of services such as YouTube. Furthermore, Google added that the Congress wouldn’t allow them to function if they faced liability for copyright infringement.

As expected, Google denied all allegations, claiming that they fully respect and comply with the DMCA, and that it’s not their job to assist content owners in protecting their works.

However, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but there is one thing that we know for sure, even before the matter is settled: as Viacom is entitled to accuse, and Google is entitled to defend itself, the DMCA is entitled to a makeover. Such lawsuits will always raise concerns over the freedom of the Internet.

However, all parts need to work together if they want the matter to be settled: Viacom needs to better protect its works, YouTube needs to implement a better video filtering system (it currently relies on reports from users to remove or block a video) and the DMCA should change too, but without altering the very essence of websites such as YouTube, which rely on user generated content.