Breaking Judgment in Google’s Youtube Copyright Court Case
Google has won its court case against Viacom, where it was facing a $1 billion claim for allowing users to upload copyrighted clips to YouTube. The landmark case is expected to have a major impact on future cases dealing with the responsibilities of the operators of user-generated media libraries, including BitTorrent sites.
Over the past years Google has been battling in court with Viacom over the question of whether YouTube is protected against copyright infringement claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton granted Google’s motion for summary judgment, ruling that Google is protected by the DMCA’s safe harbor provision. Effectively, this means that YouTube doesn’t have to remove any clips unless they are asked to do so by copyright holders.
“If a service provider knows of specific instances of infringement, the provider must promptly remove the infringing material. If not, the burden is on the owner to identify the infringement. General knowledge that infringement is ‘ubiquitous’ does not impose a duty on the service provider to monitor or search its service for infringements,” Judge Stanton wrote.
In a response, Google claimed the judgment to be a victory…
via: TorrentFreak by Ernesto
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