8 ms·
YouTube wins case against Viacom
- danielrhodes 16y agoThis lawsuit actually goes much further than just Google: if the judge had decided that the way YouTube was going about DMCA takedowns was incorrect, any website/service provider would have to moderate user submitted content before allowing it on the site since there was precedent in the interpretation of that law.
- Scott_MacGregor 16y agoCongratulations and way to go YouTube! Here is a video (with a cute girl) of some typical YouTube music pirates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh1nU7SeYg0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh1nU7SeYg0
- jamesbritt 16y agoI went looking for a topical remix of Der Untergang but, sadly, there does not seem to be one. Yet.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- perlpimp 16y agoWhat court this judgement was granted in? It is supreme court? if not, can't it be appealed all the way.
- sant0sk1 16y agoDistrict court of New York. http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/press/pdf/msj_decision.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...
- Natsu 16y agoSo if memory serves (IANAL, but I did take a class on court procedure a long time ago), they can appeal this to the district court of appeals. I believe that SJ motions are dispositive, so they can appeal it immediately, too. Viacom almost certainly will, too. EDIT: I was confused. It says they dismissed the whole case, not merely a part of it. So yeah, Viacom will almost certainly appeal ASAP. So this is still pretty far below the Supreme Court (which might or might not be willing to grant cert; they don't have to hear just any old case) and there's likely to be quite a bit of legal wrangling to go through. Perhaps even years worth, unless they can settle. Google has been smart from what I've seen in terms of pointing out that the relevant part of copyright law is whether someone has permission to post something, and that's not something you can determine algorithmically. Even Viacom's lawyers screwed that up, after doing due diligence, and had to remove Viacom-posted clips from the case. Twice.
- Locke1689 16y agoWe have to see what grounds they appeal the case on but unless there is a significant Constitutional question in play SCOTUS rarely grants cert.
- Natsu 16y agoThis doesn't get appealed to the Supreme Court (yet). This would next go to the District Court of Appeals for that circuit (and would later get appealed en banc) unless there's some point of law I don't know about that's special to this case. Which is possible, given that IANAL, but I think this is a pretty straightforward copyright case, so I'm not sure where else they could go without coming up with some new claims. You don't get to appeal to the Supreme Court until you've exhausted all your other appeals. And there aren't many instances where SCOTUS has original jurisdiction (those are very rare, and in that case you go straight to the Supremes rather than dealing with lower courts). But, no, I don't think they'll grant cert (though you never know). Viacom flamed out on summary judgment. IMHO, this is more like SCO where you have an angry litigant who will exhaust all appeals rather than admit defeat, which is why I feel that appeal is inevitable. Also, they'll be lobbying lawmakers to change the law. You can bank on that. They're already working on the Obama administration from what I can see, given that piracy crackdown they promised.
- thefool 16y agoThe supreme court only sees the cases it wants to. Though if they did take it, that would set a lasting precedent. Either way, its a victory.
- rortian 16y agoI'd have to look into it further, but I think getting a summary judgment is pretty damning. There are cases that get a summary judgment that do go onto getting overturned by the Supreme Court, but statistically those are, of course, quite rare.
- dkuchar 16y agoViacom won't take this lying down (it will set a hell of a precedent), but great win for YouTube and the future.
- nuxi7 16y agoActually the interesting thing is that a good chunk of the ruling is citing multiple existing precedents stating that youtube is not guilty of contributory infringment. So it seems the precedents are there, but only the big guys like Google can stand up and get them recognized in court.
- _delirium 16y agoThe cost of litigating a case like this is pretty unfortunate. Some of the more on-point precedents were recently set by Veoh (cited on pp. 24-27 of the YouTube decision), who won their case and then went bankrupt almost immediately afterwards: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/veoh-files-for-bankruptcy-after-fending-off-infringement-charges/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/veoh-files-for-bankru...
- nuxi7 16y agoAh, even if you win, you lose. After I made my previous post I was pondering what Viacom hops to win in this case. The obvious thought is that they want to gut the DMCA safe harbor, but this seems like it would make combating piracy harder in the long run. The safe harbor is the carrot offered so that service providers respond to DMCA takedown notices. Without that carrot, or with it much farther away, service providers are less likely to cooperate with Viacom. Viacom is setting the playing field for service providers like this: 1. Dedicate resources to DMCA takedowns and then spend millions defending your safe harbor status anyway, or 2. Spend millions in copyright fines This is a bad playing field to set, the DMCA takedown is a pretty sweet deal for Viacom. Why spoil it by making option 2 so attractive to service providers? And then option 3 dawned on me: 3. Don't allow user content I don't think this case is really about copyright at all. It seems to me that Viacom's real goal is just to squash a competitor using the courts.
- TotlolRon 16y agoThose who think they can never do wrong won against those who can never do right. Thrilling.
- jakevoytko 16y agoThis is very exciting! In this case, I want the law on Google's side. Some of the provisions of the DMCA are ridiculous, but the DMCA claim/counterclaim process is better than alternatives, like vetting all user submitted content up-front. Sites depending on user-submitted content don't have to worry about undue burden.
- MikeCapone 16y agoThis is big, even if only one battle in a larger war.
- lincolnq 16y agoI didn't hear about this case. Summary?
- jmillikin 16y agoViacom uploaded promotional materials to YouTube, then sent YouTube DMCA notices to take them down, then uploaded them again, then sued YouTube for hosting copyrighted content. If you had to re-read that sentence a few times, don't worry, that's normal.
- joubert 16y agoGeez. I wonder which lunatic at Viacom thought of that. Do they think is is Cirque du Soleil?
- grellas 16y agoA few comments on this summary judgment ruling: 1. The decision came at the trial-court level and is not binding on other courts (though it might be persuasive). It is a summary judgment, meaning that the judge decided it before a trial could be held based on affidavits submitted by the parties. This also means that it will be easier to reverse on appeal than would a decision after trial. 2. The decision puts the burden on a copyright holder to identify item-by-item each claimed instance of copyright infringement and to report it under the DMCA. It leaves the hosting party in a position of being able to ignore what may or may not be infringing on its site so long as it responds promptly and faithfully to take-down notices for specific items. 3. The court sharply distinguished precedents concerning sites that had facilitated P2P copying, concluding that those cases had nothing to do with the DMCA safe harbor. Viacom had obviously played up those cases, essentially arguing that the defendants here profited from the regular and widespread posting of infringing materials on the YouTube site and therefore should be guilty of some form of contributory infringement liability. The court stiff-armed all such arguments by saying, in effect, "no, that's all different - Google's sole obligation here was to comply with DMCA and, if it did, it can't be held liable as a contributory infringer." 4. The court also dismissed the idea that Google could be held liable for not doing wholesale take-downs upon receiving a general notice that broad categories of materials on its site were potentially infringing (in essence, holding that a hosting site cannot possibly be in a position to determine what truly is or is not infringing just because it falls in some category or other of materials that might be infringing). Thus, the court refused to interpret DMCA in a way that puts the hosting party in a position where it must actively monitor its site for offending materials apart from its obligation to respond to specific take-down requests. 5. What is really involved here is a policy dispute over the safe-harbor protections of DMCA: Google says it is enough that it complies with take-down requests; Viacom says Google should still be liable if widespread posting of infringing material is regularly going on and if Google is profiting from that activity. 6. Though the judge did not make formal mention of it in his decision, it cannot have helped Viacom that it appears to have had dirty hands in this mess, in part by having its own agents upload a good number of the allegedly offending materials to the site. This sort of conduct really stinks of a setup and prompt judges to shape their formal legal reasoning in a way that reflects their disapproval of such misconduct. 7. On a final note, summary judgments are notoriously difficult to uphold on appeal and so this will be appealed and the outcome of that appeal will be anybody's guess. Therefore, an important victory for Google but by no means any sort of final one.
- chris24 16y agoViacom has posted a brief response on their website: http://news.viacom.com/news/Pages/summaryjudgment.aspx http://news.viacom.com/news/Pages/summaryjudgment.aspx
- jurjenh 16y agoSeems like they were already settling in for the long haul anyway: This case has always been about whether intentional theft of copyrighted works is permitted under existing law and we always knew that the critical underlying issue would need to be addressed by courts at the appellate levels. Today's decision accelerates our opportunity to do so.
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoSounds like they are going to challenge the law, not Google.
- pmccool 16y agoWhat happens if Viacom appeals and wins? Presumably it gets sent back for trial or something?
- sethg 16y agoYeah—as grellas says above, a ruling on summary judgement basically says “the law is so totally on this guy’s side that there’s no point to having a trial to decide what the facts are”, and all an appeals court has to do is say “umm, actually, if the facts are X or Y or Z then this guy loses, so go have a trial”. And after the trial, whichever side doesn’t like the verdict can appeal again.
- ck2 16y agoLooks like the only winners in the fair-use wars will be multi-billion dollar corporations. So will viacom go directly after the uploaders next or does this lawsuit prevent that? Because end-users have been proven to lose most of the time with far less money to defend themselves.
- ars 16y agoWhat? Google won because they did nothing illegal, end users loose when the do something illegal. Money does help in lawsuits, but you really think end users loose due to lack of money? Even when their defense was donated?
- ck2 16y agoYes, when there are staggering judgments against users, I think something is fishy, and I have to assume poor defense (ie. a million dollars for 30 songs). It's designed to scare the average person into settling for several thousand dollars because they cannot afford a defense at all.