YouTube wins in court against Viacom and gets video copyright

27th June, 2010 by adina
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YouTube recently obtained a historic victory by winning a summary judgement in the Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit. The court decided that YouTube and Google could not be accused of piracy because they enjoyed protection by safe harbor terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The ruling found that video sites were exonerated as they cooperated with producers in order to tackle copyright problems.

Viacom has accused YouTube for intentional violation of copyright, as it took no action against copyright violations found later. It even claimed YouTube had profited from piracy. However, Judge Louis Stanton decided that YouTube was not aware of eventual violations when these ones happened or there was no notification from Viacom when such violations occurred. Viacom has already declared it intends to appeal the judicial decision.

If the ruling is upheld, it will have major impacts on media sites with user-submitted uploads, as any future lawsuits accusing the sites of negligence without directly proving the facts would be blocked. There could also be a ripple effect visible on peer-to-peer downloads, as Internet providers would be absolved of any guilt if no sign exists that individual users would violate the copyright.


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