NEW York: Google has settled a landmark copyright lawsuit in which Viacom accused the internet search company of posting its programmes on YouTube without permission.
The settlement was announced 11 months after US district judge Louis Stanton in Manhattan rejected Viacom's damages claims over Google's alleged posting of clips from 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart', ' South Park', SpongeBob SquarePants' and other programmes that viewer had uploaded to Youtube.
Viacom, a global mass media company, had been appealing that decision to the 2nd US circuit Court of Appeals in New York. Oral argument had been scheduled for March 24, according to court records.
Viacom had originally filed a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube and others in 2007, accusing YouTube of broadcasting 79,000 copyrighted videos on its website between 2005 and 2008.
The case tested the reach of federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998) law that made it illegal to produce technology to circumvent anti-piracy measured, but limited liability of online service providers for copyright infringement by users.
In ruling against Viacom for the second time in three years, Stanton had concluded in his April 2013 decision that Google and YouTube had been protected from Viacom's copyright claim by "Safe Labour" provisions in the law.
Own Opinion
YouTube is the world's top 1 video sharing site, hence cases such as video copyright infringement is a norm that happens almost everyday. Such video sharing sites does not have perfect methods to detect infringement hence we can expect some exemption with terms such as the "safe harbour provision for online storage".
However the copyright owner should inform the OSPs once He/She noticed infringement happened on their intellectual property and request the OSPs to take down the material shall there is no consent from the owner for such distribution.
Links : Wikipedia : DMCA (Safe Harbor)
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