The immense popularity of YouTube and the rapidly eroding audience of network television could only mean that one day someone out there would think of bringing it into our homes and not through our computers. I am of course referring to Apple’s announcement to bring YouTube direct through its Apple TV streaming service, the next greatest thing from the mind of Steve Jobs (barring the release of the iPhone of course.)

Ironically enough Apple will debut the YouTube service in mid-June, right about when the iPhone hits the masses. Apple will be launching with “thousands” of YouTube’s videos and adding thousands more each week, promising that the entirety of the Tube’s content will be available for Apple TV customers sometime this fall. How often Apple would update its YouTube content after that wasn’t mentioned but if you really need that …

Friday YouTube and their new parent company Google were hit with another copyright infringement lawsuit, this time from England’s top soccer league and a US music publisher.

The Premier League and Bourne Co. issued the lawsuit citing that not only does YouTube have their copyrighted content on the video sharing website, but that they are encouraging people to view the footage on the website and subsequently are “knowingly” misappropriating the two companies intellectual property. By this, according to the lawsuit, the operators of YouTube are exploiting the valuable intellectual video property for their own gain without any payment to the owners of these videos.

This lawsuit comes less than two months after Viacom sued YouTube and Google for copyright infringement of their television programming, and 6 months after the search engine giant Google purchased the YouTube …

Two days ago Viacom dropped a $1 billion lawsuit on Google and YouTube stating that the video sharing giant had violated copyright laws by hosting videos created by some of Viacom’s programming brand.

In response, attorneys for Google feel that they have strong legal protections under current copyright law, according to Reuters. The legal team feels they have a very strong defense due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

“Here there is a law which is specifically designed to give Web hosts such as us, or… bloggers or people that provide photo-album hosting online … the ‘safe harbor’ we need in order to be able to do hosting online,” said Alexander Macgillivray, general counsel for Google. “We will never launch a product or acquire a company unless we are completely satisfied with its legal basis …

Last month Viacom had asked YouTube to remove over 100k video clips from its website that Viacom stated violated copyrights, and then later that month Viacom made a deal with Joost to provide video content for their website. Today Viacom has issues a lawsuit against YouTube and its parent company Google for copyright infringement claiming 1 billion dollars in damages.

Viacom is claiming that YouTube has over 160,000 unauthorized video clips of Viacom’s content on their website which collectively has been viewed more than 1.5 billion times. Viacom is also looking to find a way to ensure that YouTube and Google do not violate any copyright infringement again with Viacom’s content.

Some of Viacoms many programming brands include BET, Famous Music, MTV Networks – MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, CMT: Country Music Television, Spike TV, TV Land …

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has announced a deal with YouTube to publish excerpts from the BBC news and entertainment programs on the popular video downloading site. The BBC clips starting appearing on YouTube Friday, which marks the first time an international broadcaster has made such a deal with the Google-owned YouTube site.

Mark Thompson, BBC director, hopes the agreement will help drive more traffic and subsequently more revenues to the BBC web site to supplement British license fees for taxpayers. “It’s essential that the BBC embraces new ways of reaching wider audiences with nonexclusive partnerships such as these,” said Thompson.

The BBC videos will be available through their own channels on the YouTube portal. One of the channels called BBC Worldwide will show popular BBC programs such as “Top Gear” and “Spooks” along with nature documentaries. A BBC …

A version of YouTube mobile will soon be available to Vodafone customers in the U.K.

The YouTube mobile service for Vodafone will include a new selection of popular videos each day. Customers will be able to upload their own content from their mobile phones, forward links of videos to friends, and search through video content.

“Today’s announcement with YouTube further expands the range of Internet services we’re bringing to the mobile, introducing a seamless experience that allows customers to engage with user generated content on the move,” said Frank H.Rövekamp, Global Chief Marketing Officer, Vodafone. “Through attracting the most popular internet brands onto Vodafone mobile devices we will continue to ensure our customers can access and share the best entertainment anytime and anywhere.”

Vodafone has been on a spree of partnerships of late. Recent announcements include alliances with MySpace, eBay, and even …

November saw Google’s acquisition of YouTube and many of us wondered what would happen to the existing Google Video product. Certainly Google wouldn’t need two competing Video services. A recent post in the Google blog by Salar Kamangar, Vice President of Product Management, has shed some light on their plans for Google Video and the future of video in general.

Google’s extraordinary strength has always been creating products that make information more available and easily searchable. Google products aren’t necessarily known for their friendly, cheerful interfaces which is likely a big reason they bought YouTube – in addition to the vast legions of users. YouTube’s strengths are its community of users who create, watch and share videos. Google’s plan is to make the most of the strengths of these two products.

Google Video will be relegated to a video search …

What does 1.65 billion dollars buy you these days? Well, if you are Google it buys you a popular free video sharing web site and a fair share of controversy.

YouTube, which lets users upload, view, and share video clips was founded in February 2005 by three early employees of PayPal. YouTube has made headlines recently due to the scuttlebutt concerning copyright violations. Most videos posted on YouTube are original, but the site also features a certain amount of copyrighted material. This problem has caused some pundits to predict the startup eventually would be sued into oblivion.

This recent purchase by Google is the latest in a line of purchases by the search engine behemoth. Last year Google spent $130.5 million buying a total of 15 small companies.

Video sharing websites appear to be all the rage these days as marquee names like …