By

Google Wins YouTube Case Against Viacom

A lawsuit that spanned three years and took a 30-page ruling from the presiding judge has finally come to end. Yesterday, a district court judge threw out Viacom’s case against Google over YouTube videos that they alleged violated their copyright.

Back in 2007, Viacom sent more than 100,000 take-down notices to YouTube, insisting those videos all contained Viacom copyrighted material.  Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), YouTube complied, but Viacom asserted that YouTube should be held responsible for the copyright infringement of its users.

Google argued that under “safe harbor“, a clause that is supposed to protect online service providers from this type of litigation, they should not have been held responsible for their users’ copyright infringement and that once they were aware of it, they took action to stop it.

Viacom argued that, because Google had knowledge of possible infringing videos, safe harbor should not apply to them. The judge, however, disagreed.

“[I]f a service provider knows (from notice from the owner, or a “red flag”) of specific instances of infringement, the provider must promptly remove the infringing material. If not, the burden is on the owner to identify the infringement. General knowledge that infringement is “ubiquitous” does not impose a duty on the service provider to monitor or search its service for infringements.”

The DMCA safe harbor protection is designed to encourage sites like YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, and any other participatory site with user-created content to allow users to express their creativity. If website owners were always fearful of being sued over user-created content, those websites would most likely cease to exist.

Thus, the win is considered a landmark victory for YouTube and all social media sites like it, and business will continue as usual. Viacom, however, has vowed to appeal the ruling.

Tags: , ,

Written by

I am a librarian with 8 years of experience in information architecture, technology, free and open source software, and electronic publishing. I have written hundreds of articles on topics ranging from information technology to politics. I also write fiction novels, short stories, and fables.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *