Judge Louis Stanton of the United States District Court Southern District of New York has granted Google and YouTube's motion for a summary judgment in Viacom v. YouTube based on "safe harbor" protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s 17 U.S.C. § 512(c).
Here's an excerpt from "YouTube Wins Summary Judgment in Viacom DMCA Lawsuit" by EFF's Kurt Opsahl:
The wealth of legislative history and precedent visible in this opinion shows just how uncontroversial the decision is. An online host is only liable if it doesn't take down specific instances of infringement it actually knows about. That's been well established, as have the principles that the host doesn't have a duty to actively monitor everything on the site, or that the online service can do more than merely store works. If the parties involved here had been a small video blogger and a local bulletin board, this case would have attracted almost no media attention, because it's not breaking any new legal ground. The amount of attention—the reason this is a big deal—is really due to the size of the companies and the numbers at stake. The only new ground that could have been broken would have been if the judge had deviated from the history of the statute and the ever-lengthening line of precedent that reaches just the same conclusion.
Read more about it at "Google Defeats Viacom's $1 Billion YouTube Suit," "How the YouTube-Viacom Ruling Will Set the Web Free," and "Judge Sides with Google in Viacom Video Suit."
