Court backs YouTube in copyright tussle
Online video-sharing site YouTube can continue to host copyright infringing material, after a New York District Court ruled that it is not responsible for infringing content on its site.
Judge Louis Stanton of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment in favour of the company in June, denying direct and secondary copyright infringement claims brought by Viacom.
Separate copyright claims brought by the English Premier League and the Football Association against YouTube, which is owned by search engine Google, were also denied.
The case, filed by the entertainment company in 2007 and heard in the US District Court of the Southern District of New York, hinged on whether YouTube adheres to the safe-harbour provisions afforded to a service provider as stated in Section 512(c)(1) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
If YouTube can show that it does not have actual knowledge of the infringing content available though its service, then it is not liable for the infringement of copyright caused by user uploads.
Judge Stanton said: “The infringing works in suit may be a small fraction of millions of works posted by others on the service’s platform, whose provider cannot by inspection determine whether the use has been licensed by the owner, or whether its posting is a ‘fair use’ of the material.”
Explicit takedown notices are issued by the copyright owner when infringing content is identified. YouTube must respond quickly to these and remove the infringing content.
Judge Stanton said: “When Viacom over a period of months accumulated some 100,000 videos and then sent one mass takedown notice [in] February, 2007, by the next business day, YouTube had removed virtually all of them.”
Viacom is confident that it will overturn the decision on appeal.
It said: “This case has always been about whether intentional theft of copyrighted works is permitted under existing law and we always knew that the critical underlying issue would need to be addressed by courts at the appellate levels. The decision accelerates our opportunity to do so.”
Kent Walker, vice president and general counsel at Google, said: “The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work co-operatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online.”
