Viacom Vs. Google’s YouTube

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Viacom took Google’s to court filing a $1 million dollar copyright infringement against Google may have been dismissed by the court, but the Viacom will appeal.

The U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton said that this popular video website could not be held responsible when people post clips from production companies such as Viacom without obtaining this or any production company’s approval.

Viacom’s argument is that the business model depended on a sleight of hand and it attracts millions of visitors who want to see entertainment for free. They also state that the site ensures that there is plenty to see without even paying a license fee, therefore making it way to easy for their users to post clips and way to hard for copyright owner to keep track of those postings.

Judge Stanton further went on to state that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has a “safe harbor” provision which was designed to relieve websites from the burden of checking user-generated material before it is posted. So even at YouTube, where people violate the law mere knowledge of the copyright violations in general is not enough to make them liable. He also state that the current system can work well as was when Viacom had identified 100,000 videos that it stated were in violation of copyrights. YouTube complied with removing virtually of them the very next day.

Of course Viacom is going to appeal this ruling and because they feel that this ruling is flawed and is contrary to the language of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Viacom is receiving the support of other well known companies such as NBC Universal and Time Warner to name a few.

While I was reading Kent Walker who is the General Counsel for Google’s blog posting he stated that it is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world that want to use the Web to communicate and share experiences.

Google has spent $100 million dollars defending YouTube and they did that even before this all went to trial. It appears more money will be spent when or if the courts will hear the appeal of Viacom.

So, unless Viacom can find a judge who will be more liberal in their decision of their case, this lawsuit will go nowhere and for now as long as Google has billions of dollars backing them, YouTube isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.