The Viacom/YouTube spat has officially graduated from a "kerfuffle" to a "brouhaha" with the news that Viacom has just sued YouTube in federal court.

The lawsuit seeks massive damages from YouTube for what Viacom terms its "brazen disregard of the intellectual property laws." According to the complaint, Viacom has managed to identify 150,000 of its clips on the service; in total, these clips have been viewed an "astounding" 1.5 billion times. That might sound like incredible free publicity for Viacom, but the company sees it instead as deliberate copyright infringement. Viacom is outraged at having to file "takedown" notices for every single clip, just to see clips of the same material appear again on the site, often the same day.

Full story: Ars Technica