YouTube Wins The Viacom Battle




CNN is reporting that Google won the draining three-year battle with Viacom on Wednesday. It was ruled in a federal court that YouTube subsidiary would not be accountable for any of the copyright infringements made by YouTube users.

According to the site, the U.S. district court, located in New York, ruled in favor of YouTube where the site is now “covered by a safe harbor clause in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.” This will protect service providers from any penalties for any copyright violations the users make.

“The provider must know of the particular case before he can control it,” Judge Louis Stanton said in the ruling. “The provider need not monitor or seek out facts indicating such activity.”

It’s finally the end of a long battle over copyright infringement that got so heated that a few poor choices in words were used. CNN reports that Viacom even had a section of its online newsroom covering the entire legal battle.

Viacom still claims that when Google bought YouTube, they knew that the site was guilty of copyright infringement, but chose to ignore it. The site was asking for $1 billion damages.

The company wants Google to review the content prior to anything being posted, instead of waiting for copyright holders to contact them asking for the illegal content to be removed.

Google made the announcement on the ruling on the company’s blog yesterday.

“This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other,” Kent Walker, Google vice president and general council, said.