In a pleasant surprised, federal Judge Louis Stanton ruled in favor of Google in the landmark $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit Viacom had brought against the company.
The judge granted Google’s motion for summary judgment, saying that the company was shielded from Viacom’s copyright claims by “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That law generally protects user-generated sites from liability for copyrighted material uploaded by users as long as the operator of the site takes down the material when notified by its rightful owner that it was uploaded without permission.
The ruling dismisses the 3 year old case, awarding summary judgement to Google. In his ruling, Judge Stanton stated the YouTube owner performed the required actions Congress had intended when enacting the DMCA. The “safe harbor” provisions were included in the law specifically for situations like this.
TechDirt has one of the more comprehensive write-ups about the ruling, so if you are itching for more details then head on over to their coverage. Bottom line: this is good news and a huge victory for fair use and the DMCA safe harbor provisions. I do not feel for Viacom whatsoever and believe they were doomed from the start, deserving to lose this lawsuit.
