Google and YouTube defeat Viacom in copyright lawsuit

NEW YORK Thu Jun 24, 2010 8:58am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Google Inc won a landmark victory over media companies as a Manhattan federal judge threw out Viacom Inc's $1 billion lawsuit accusing the Internet company of allowing copyrighted videos on its YouTube service without permission.

Viacom claimed "tens of thousands of videos on YouTube, resulting in hundreds of millions of views," had been posted based on its copyrighted works, and that the defendants knew about it but did nothing to stop illegal uploads.

But in a 30-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton said it would be improper to hold Google and YouTube liable under federal copyright law merely for having a "general awareness" that videos might be posted illegally.

"Mere knowledge of prevalence of such activity in general is not enough," he wrote. "The provider need not monitor or seek out facts indicating such activity."


It called Stanton's ruling "fundamentally flawed," saying it reflects neither Congress' intent behind copyright laws nor recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions.




It alleged that copyrighted works uploaded illegally included "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," "South Park," "SpongeBob SquarePants," and others.

"These issues are really important for content creators to protect their intellectual property against the usage by online aggregators," said Laura Martin, an analyst Needham & Co. "It is really important for content creators to get paid.

"This is the beginning, not the end," she went on. "Sumner won't roll over and die on this."

Kent Walker, Google's general counsel, on the company's blog, called the ruling "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."


Google and YouTube argued they were entitled to "safe harbor" protection under the digital copyright law because they had insufficient notice of particular alleged infringements.

Stanton agreed, saying it would "contravene the structure and operation" of the law to "impose responsibility" on service providers to discover which postings infringe copyrights.

The judge added that the act's notification scheme works "efficiently," saying that after Viacom on Friday, February 2, 2007 sent a mass takedown notice covering 100,000 videos, YouTube had removed "virtually all of them" by the following Monday.


"Certainly for Google, there's been so many regulatory and legal negative headlines about them, so to see them on the winning side of something will certainly be a positive," said analyst Benjamin Schachter at Broadpoint AmTech.







"The film and television industries learned the lessons of the music industry that you need to fulfill consumer demand in an approved manner and keep those who offer unauthorized access at the fringe," Gabelli & Co analyst Christopher Marangi said.


YouTube itself, meanwhile, is changing as executives try to enter licensing agreements to add full-length programing to the short user-uploaded clips that dominate the site.

"This was a test of the ground rules for the distribution and consumption of online content," Marangi said.





Comments (1)
NathanielMar1 wrote:
This (along with countless other similar instances on the internet) is a blatant violation of copyright law. How can Judge Louis Stanton say that mere knowledge is not enough? I, a high school student, almost got suspended last year due to me knowing the administrator password for the network. It was not my business to know the admin password, and I should have gotten some sort of discipline for it. On a much larger level, Google/Youtube has violated the same principal; they knew that their systems were being used for crime, and they did nothing about it.

Jul 02, 2010 9:55am EDT  --  Report as abuse