14 DAY TRIAL // Viacom lost its lawsuit against YouTube, as the judge presiding the case found that the video site was well within the confines of the DMCA “safe harbor” protection. US District Judge Louis Stanton in Manhattan found most of YouTube’s arguments compelling and rejected all of Viacom’s, making for a very clear victory. Google, understandably, welcomed the decision, while Viacom vowed to appeal it.
“Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement,” Kent Walker, vice president and general counsel at Google, wrote.
“This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other,” he added.
The decision comes after a three-year legal battle between Google, Viacom and other media companies. Viacom sued Google for videos on YouTube that it said violated its copyrights. The media giant made the case that Google was aware and even welcomed copyright infringement and that it should have had better protection and a way of finding and taking down infringing videos.
Google argued that it would be impossible to know which videos were infringing, which were ‘fair use’ and which were actually licensed to the uploader. This view was supported by the fact that Viacom itself was unable to determine which videos were legitimate at one point.
Both companies asked for a summary judgment, a ruling without going to full trial, and, surprisingly, the court agreed and came to a decision. Basically, the court says that the DMCA safe harbors were specifically designed for situations like this. What’s more, the court said that, even if YouTube was aware that there were copyright-infringing videos on the site, “mere knowledge of prevalence of such activity in general is not enough.” The site has to be aware of specific works for it to be obligated to take action or face legal consequences.
The judge said that the DMCA take-down notice system seemed to be working for YouTube, citing Viacom’s own request as an example. The media company sent a notice of some 100,000 videos that it believed were infringing to YouTube and the video site took most of them down within a day. This, he says, is a clear indicator that the current system works and that Viacom doesn’t really have anything to complain about.
You can read the full decision here. Of course, this is not over, Viacom will pursue the case with higher courts, but it does represent a great victory for Internet companies and common sense in general.