Google-owned video services YouTube has defeated a giant lawsuit brought against it by entertainment giant Viacom, which owns MTV, VH1 and Paramount Pictures, which accused YouTube of massive copyright infringement.
US District Court judge Louis Stanton said in his ruling that YouTube was protected against Viacom’s accusations due to provisions contained in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The case started in 2007. Viacom sued Google, saying that YouTube allowed pirated video to be posted on its site, and as a result, it broke several copyright laws. The company sought damages of $US1 billion.
In July last year, a judge dismissed some of the claims. He argued that damages were not available for any works produced outside the US that weren’t registered in America, except for any live broadcasts.
Then, in March of this year, Google said in a blog post that Viacom managers had even uploaded videos to YouTube, and then tried to hide their tracks in the process. Zahavah Levine, chief counsel for YouTube, said the evidence was clear.
“On countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.”
“Given Viacom’s own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out.”
Now, judge Stanton has said that Google is off the hook. He says in his ruling that it cannot hold Google and YouTube liable under copyright law just because it had a “general awareness” that illegal videos might be posted on the site.
“Mere knowledge of prevalence of such activity in general is not enough. The provider need not monitor or seek out facts indicating such activity,” Stanton wrote as part of his 30-page ruling.
However, Viacom plans to appeal. It said in a statement the decision was “fundamentally flawed”, and said it doesn’t reflect recent Supreme Court decisions or even the intent behind digital copyright law.
“Copyright protection is essential to the survival of creative industries,” the firm’s laywer told reporters. “It is illegal for companies to build businesses with creative material they’ve stolen from others.”
Stanton points out that Safe Harbor provisions protect Google, and it went out of its way to remove offending videos. In 2007, it notified Google of 100,000 videos that could be considered infringing copyright, and “virtually all” of those videos were off the site within three days.
Google lawyer Kent Walker said in a blog post that the decision comes alongside previous judgements which state internet services should be protected when they work with content providers to combat piracy.
“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 said.
The decision comes just months after an Australian Federal Court judge cut down a claim from the entertainment industry against ISP iiNet. He stated that ISPs are not liable for the copyright infringement activities users commit on its networks.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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