US search giant Google today scored a major victory in its on-going legal battle with media company Viacom with the US federal court deciding the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) protected its YouTube site from copyright violation.
In his ruling, which appears set to be appealed by Viacom, district court judge Louis Stanton agreed with Google that YouTube is protected by “safe harbour” provisions of the DMCA. This allows for internet service providers and hosting companies to be protected against copyright violation claims, even if they knowingly host copyrighted material, provided they remove the offending material when requested to do so by the copyright holder.
Judge Stanton said that in order for a service provider to take down material in violation of copyright, that service provider “requires knowledge of it [the violation], which must be item-specific”.
In its official blog, Google claim an “important victory” not only for the company but also for the “billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other.”