Thread: YouTube wins court case against Viacom

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Google triumphed in a nasty, three-year war with Viacom on Wednesday as a federal court ruled that Google's YouTube subsidiary is not liable for its users' copyright infringements.

A U.S. district court in New York ruled YouTube is covered by a "safe harbor" clause in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that protects service providers from penalties for their users' copyright violations, as long as they address those violations once they're made aware of them.

"The provider must know of the particular case before he can control it," Judge Louis Stanton said in the ruling. "The provider need not monitor or seek out facts indicating such activity."

The ruling follows a years-long battle over copyright infringement that has featured heated bickering and vicious cussing. Viacom devoted an entire section of its online newsroom to chronicling the legal fight.

Viacom (VIA), the owner of MTV Networks and Paramount Pictures, maintained that Google bought YouTube knowing full well that the site was guilty of copyright infringement but turned a blind eye to users' violations. It asked for damages of $1 billion in its lawsuit.

The media company has said it believes Google should review content before it is posted, rather than waiting for copyright holders to request that Google remove illegal content.

Viacom did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but told other media outlets that it plans to appeal the ruling.

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) announced the ruling on its official company blog Wednesday.

"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," Kent Walker, Google vice president and general council, said on the blog.

SOURCE: CNN

So, this is definitely some good news for Google. With that said, I would love to hear feedback on this, what do you think this could do for future cases which would involve private or public torrent search engines. We have seen a few already getting acquitted such as OiNK. Do you this corporations such as Viacom are wasting their money on these stupid lawsuits? I most certainly think this is the case.

first, i would like to say that i really dislike most of these companies such as Viacom. they are ruining our online experience and make us be somewhat afraid every time we open our browser. i understand where they are coming from because that is how they make their profit from people buying their products, but i say that if a person is unable to really go out and buy every single thing that is published nowadays they shouldn't be so strict and shouldn't go so overboard by going against all of these people. i may be biased on this issue for the obvious reasons. actually, i am very sure that i am biased, but i am sure that many of you feel the same way as i do since we are all HERE.

as for my opinion on the future i am somewhat afraid that all of this will end someday. YouTube win over Viacom is great but as you mention some have lost and i am scared that in the future these will just increase and outcomes may not be as good as this one.

are they wasting money? i wouldn't say that is the case. fear is one of the worst things for humans. many people will see law suits like this and will get afraid to do anything that may be against the law and will instead defeat their trust in the "freedom" online that all of cherish and appreciate and without it the internet is no longer what it used to be.

on a side note it is funny that all of a sudden the court decided to throw out this law suit after three years it being dragged in courts.

EDIT: this is way off topic, but i think i say somewhere that you got engaged or married. if you are the person then i would like to say congratulations and all the best to you.

MrE,

Yep, getting married Saturday June 26th.

Well my thoughts on this is that this case can be hugely applied to torrent trackers! I would say this is a major break through and just that one quote sums up it up, ""The provider must know of the particular case before he can control it." Of course not all judges will come to admit this in all similar cases from now on, however, it is a start.

Public trackers such as mininova or the piratebay were not always aware of copyright violations by their users. Though this is probable a bad example because they didn't always act, but take any other torrent tracker and if they are no longer responsible for their users infringing copyright holders rights then this is great news! Trackers can feel safe not having to monitor their users and taking the responsibility of the user on their shoulders. This goes without saying as long as they act where copyright infringement is exhibited.

However, I can also see this turning out for the worse. Huge copyright agencies devoting their time and resources to combat this by having a department committed to sending take down requests for torrents day in and out.

Originally Posted by Ixius

MrE,

Yep, getting married Saturday June 26th.

awesome man. you have only one more day to go and you will be there. make sure to have much fun and enjoy yourself because this will be one of those memories that you will always remember. once again, congratulations to both of you and all the best.

i would like to say sorry to other members for going a bit off topic, but i had to say my best wishes. it is not everyday that someone who you meet online is getting married.

I love it when big companies like this just waste time and effort on everyones part. Good to see that nothing really became of it.

Good luck on getting married too mate.. thats a 24/7 job right there.

HAHA f@(% viacom I hope they lost billions on that suit
with that being said no I don't think this is going to be good for torrenting b\c you can pretty much prove that TPB and similar sites if their owners ever visit the sites than they know what is on the site? I dunno just my opinion and the other thing is that now they will just put more time and effort into attacking the actual downloaders plus the US gov't is involved so you know it's all gonna come down to who is going to contribute the most money to the next election$$$

This case is unlikely to apply to most/all of the trackers discussed in these forums. The court's order does help reinforce that the Safe Harbor mechanism requires content owners, not service providers, to take the initial steps of identifying infringing content. But this distinction is only relevant if the service provider is eligible for Safe Harbor protection in the first place.

The judge's order quotes part of the legislative history which makes it clear that the law was not intended to apply to or protect "pirate" sites. YouTube's defense did a great job in establishing that YouTube was primarily designed for, and in fact offers, many legitimate services. They showed that only a small fraction of total content on the site was infringing; that it was often used for many important societal purposes such as politicians communicating with their citizens (they had a long list of other uses); and that even content that looks infringing often is not, because content owners like Viacom and its agents were posting their own clips for promotional purposes in large numbers. In my favorite part of their brief they documented how Viacom had often filed takedowns against itself; how it could not provide a clear answer to the court on which clips it authorized vs which it hadn't even after several attempts, etc. YouTube's question was: If Viacom can't tell the difference between an infringing clip vs an authorized clip, how could YouTube possibly be expected to?

Few if any tracker sites could make this same claim of being overall legitimate, so they will not qualify for Safe Harbor, so the court decision is meaningless for them.

"In a scorching post on the company's blog, YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine accuses Viacom of going to great lengths to secretly upload videos to YouTube in order to take advantage of its promotional value even as they were suing YouTube, arguing that YouTube should be able to tell the difference between Viacom videos that were uploaded by actual infringers as opposed to Viacom employees and agents being paid to pretend to be infringers."

YouTube: Viacom secretly posted its videos even as they sued us for not taking down Viacom videos - Boing Boing


This was revealed as fact during the discovery phase of the trial by Viacom's own internal documents. Welcome to the upside down world of corporate America.