YouTube Wins Case Against Viacom Copyright Violation Claim

Exciting news for Google and YouTube as a Manhattan judge threw out a $1 billion lawsuit brought on by media giant Viacom.  If you hadn’t previously heard, Viacom accused YouTube for numerous copyright violations claiming that the video sharing site allowed the use of copyrighted materials without permission.  What’s even more, Viacom claimed that YouTube did it all intentionally.

The case was thrown out when the judge decided that Google and YouTube couldn’t be held liable for simply having a general knowledge that some videos may have been posted illegally.

During the case, Google and YouTube claimed safe harbor protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act going on to confirm that if they had sufficient notice to an offence, they would have removed it.  The judge found that this was indeed the case since in previous instances offending violations were removed with sufficient notice.

Google and their legal team believe that this victory is an important one – and they’re right.  Not only did they escape the stigma of copyright infringement but a giant step toward protecting the rights of Internet users.  If they had lost, the principles of user-generated content and participatory media would probably have changed drastically.

Of course, Viacom plans to appeal. Representatives for their side say that the case is far from over as the company feels that Google and YouTube have acted maliciously and have violated the rights of content creators.  We will just have to wait and see what the future holds, but for now YouTube has prevailed!

Source – http://news.bbc.co.uk