EBay, Facebook, Yahoo back YouTube in Viacom case

By Matthew Belloni

So the battle lines are being drawn. In the wake of three Hollywood studios standing behind Viacom in its $1 billion copyright fight with Google's YouTube, four new media powerhouses have now joined Team YouTube.

EBay, Facebook, Yahoo and Barry Diller's IAC Wednesday filed an amicus brief in U.S. District Court in New York in support of YouTube's defense of the massive copyright infringement action. Not surprisingly, the digital media companies focus on what they say is Viacom's threat to innovation and democracy on the Internet.

To find YouTube liable for the copyright violations of its users would "inhibit the growth and development of user-centric online models that, day after day, make the Internet and the world more democratic," the brief argues.

Read the full brief here.