Viacom CEO: Google Deliberately Stole From Us

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman held forth at an informal presser last night in San Francisco, and CNET's Greg Sandoval was on hand to listen, if not exactly take notes. Which is a shame, because Dauman, whose company is suing Google for $1 billion, dropped a pretty big bombshell. Google, he speculated, knew YouTube was violating copyrights on Viacom videos, but figured a $1 billion court judgment was a small price to pay if the company could utterly dominate the world of Internet video posting. In addition, Sandoval reports, Dauman considered YouTube a "rogue company," and was initially relieved with Google bought it, hoping that the search giant would now force its new acquisition to respect intellectual property. In fact, meeting with Google CEO Eric Schmidt was one of Dauman's first tasks when he took the helm at Viacom in 2006. But now he thinks that Google planned all along to just say all the right things and keep letting people post copyrighted material while they built the brand. Now, he concludes, Google's feeling the backlash, as entertainment companies take one look at Google's bad faith and shy away from development deals. Now, does that sound like a man who wants to settle out of court?