Web Video Copyright Infringement Case Dismissed

2008-08-30 15:00:47 (GMT) (WiredPRNews.com - Law, Technology)

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Dallas, TX (WiredPRNews.com)—In a victory for the free exchange of user-uploaded online videos, a federal judge dismissed a 2006 lawsuit against Veoh Networks brought by Io Group Inc. over alleged copyright infringements.

Io Group charged that users of the Veoh site were uploading copyrighted material and that Veoh was not sufficiently monitoring for copyright infringement. Citing safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), U.S. District Judge Howard Lloyd stated that while Veoh worked to preserve the integrity of copyrights, it could not be held responsible for the infractions of users who uploaded videos to the site.

“It is great to see the court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights,” said Zahavah Levine, an attorney for Google subsidiary YouTube in an August 28, Informationweek.com article. Enacted in 1998, the DMCA provides penalties for developing hardware or software that overrides copy protection schemes of digital media.

The ruling is good news for YouTube because the Google subsidiary faces a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Viacom over user-uploaded videos. According to the Informationweek.com article, YouTube denied the allegations and stated that it removes videos when it discovers copyright infringements.

“The DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights,” according to Levine in an August 28 article in the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal.com. YouTube “has gone above and beyond the law to protect content owners while empowering people to communicate and share their experiences online.”

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2008/08/25/daily48.html

http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/legal/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210201310