14 DAY TRIAL // DailyMotion is just one of the YouTube-like services that were also involved in copyright infringement cases but this time, the things are almost 100 percent different. A French judge decided that DailyMotion is guilty of copyright infringement as long as it can be described as a hosting provider. Brad Spitz, a French copyright lawyer, wrote on his blog that DailyMotion is similar with MySpace from this point of view because both of them were accused by the same plaintiff of copyright infringement.
Following the judge's order, DailyMotion has to pay 23,000 euros in damages to the movie producers and, in addition, it has to pay a 1500 euros fine for every day in which the clip remained available on its official page.
"The judges held that DailyMotion is a hosting provider, and not a publisher, but that it must be held liable for copyright infringement, as it was aware of the presence of illegal contents on its site. The Court ruled that DailyMotion is not a publisher because the users themselves provide the contents, despite the fact that DailyMotion commercialises advertisements on the site (the President of the same Court, in its order dated 22 June 2007, held that because of the advertisements on the site, MySpace acted as a publisher)," the lawyer wrote.
This is quite an interesting rule because YouTube is involved into numerous legal cases in which it is accused of copyright infringement. For example, the media giant Viacom, also the owner of MTV and Comedy Central, sued Google for copyright infringement requiring $1 billion in damages. However, the online video sharing service is always protected by the DMCA act which states that an online service cannot be accused for the content uploaded by the users.
For example, the Mountain View company won the case started by Daniela Cicarelli, Ronaldo's ex-wife who sued Google for copyright infringement.