YouTube agrees to pull down Viacom's 100K video clips

Online video service YouTube on Friday agreed to remove 100,000 video clips from its hugely popular video-sharing site after media company Viacom Inc.’s claim that they had been placed on the site without its approval.

The move comes after the New York-based Viacom failed to reach a distribution agreement with San Bruno-based YouTube, which is owned by Mountain View-based online search leader Google Inc. Viacom said that YouTube and its corporate parent, Google had failed to deliver on several "filtering tools" to control unauthorized video from appearing on the hugely popular site.

"It's unfortunate that Viacom will no longer be able to benefit from YouTube's passionate audience, which has helped to promote many of Viacom's shows," a YouTube representative said.

Earlier Friday, Viacom said the videos on YouTube, which it wants to be removed, come from Viacom-owned properties, including MTV Networks and Black Entertainment Television (BET). It received no money from YouTube for publishing its content. It demanded YouTube remove the clips, saying its pirated programs on YouTube have generated about 1.2 billion video streams.

In a statement YouTube said that it would comply with the request from Viacom and it cooperates with all copyright holders to detect and immediately remove infringing content as soon as it gets aware of such incidences.

YouTube further said in the statement that it prohibits users from uploading material that infringes copyrights. “The company has historically removed clips at the request of copyright owners within hours,” the statement said.

YouTube, which had about 29.6 million visitors in December, has signed licensing agreements with some media companies such as CBS Corp. and General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal to use video clips from their programming. However, some others have yet to agree with the site over ways to get compensated for the use of their copyrighted content.

Universal Music Group, a division of French telecommunications giant Vivendi SA, had once threatened to sue YouTube for copyright infringement, but later reached a licensing deal with them last year.

The move by the media company, controlled by Sumner Redstone, comes three weeks after it announced plans to launch a Web site dubbed "Acceptable TV," which the company said will be the first step in reforming the runaway user-generated content movement.

The Web site will host a competition focused around short films, some made by the general web users, aimed at potentially becoming a TV series.

Shares of Viacom rose as much as 1.9% to $41.13 just ahead of the closing bell, while shares of Google fell 25 cents to $481.50 at 4 p.m. (New York time) in NASDAQ Stock Market trading. Over the past 12 months, the Viacom stock has traded between $32.42 and $43.87, while Google shares have risen 4.6 percent.