B E B E R E

So, it looks as though TF1 is suing Google for content on YouTube that it apparently bought the rights to. Google was served in California a few days ago and the trial will be taking place in Paris.

TF1's spokesperson refused to comment. However, according to the French business daily Les Echos, (pay site unfortunately) damages and interest against YouTube, controlled by "the American Giant Google," would be as high as 100 million euro...or ten times their receipts for 2006 which were at around 10.6 million dollars.

Les Echos added that another suit against another video-sharing site, dailymotion.com, was filed in December. The amount of damages demanded was roughly 39.7 million euros.

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From what I can gather, this is supposedly to recuperate an estimated potential loss in ad revenue per episode of a particular (American, no less) program to free stuff on You Tube. In the broader scheme of things, it looks as well that this is TF1's manner of gaining supremacy in what they call the "web community" (file sharing?) market. According to this article in Le Monde, TF1 is the fourth largest player in "community web" in France.

It's going to be interesting to see how this all works out.