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Google has fired another salvo against Viacom in their ongoing copyright skirmish, claiming that the conglom's $1 billion lawsuit over YouTube video sharing threatens how hundreds of millions exchange information on the Internet.

Google's lawyers made the claim in response to a recent amended complaint by Viacom, which alleges that the Internet has led to "an explosion of copyright infringement" by YouTube and others. The back-and-forth has intensified since Viacom brought its lawsuit last year, saying it was owed damages for the unauthorized viewing of programming from MTV, Comedy Central and other networks.

In papers submitted to a judge in U.S. District Court in Manhattan late Friday, Google said YouTube "goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works."

Google said YouTube was faithful to the requirements of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, saying the federal law was intended to protect companies like YouTube as long as they responded properly to content owners' claims of infringement.

But Viacom says Google has a terrible record on that score. In an amended complaint filed on April 24, Viacom said YouTube consistently allows unauthorized copies of popular television programming and movies to be posted on its Website and viewed tens of thousands of times. Viacom said it had identified more than 150,000 unauthorized clips of copyrighted programming -- including "SpongeBob SquarePants," ''South Park" and "MTV Unplugged" episodes and the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" -- that had been viewed "an astounding 1.5 billion times," and that those clips represent only a fraction of the content on YouTube that violates its copyrights.

It said Google and YouTube had done "little or nothing" to stop infringement. To the contrary, the availability on the YouTube site of a vast library of the copyrighted works of plaintiffs and others is the cornerstone of defendants' business plan," Viacom said.