The New York Times reported today that a Federal District Court, yesterday, in San Jose, CA, dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the IO Group, an adult entertainment company, against Veoh Networks, saying that Veoh Networks was protected by the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). IO Group, whose videos were uploaded without permission to Veoh’s website, claimed that the company was guilty of copyright infringement, however, the judge in the case disagreed. Judge Howard Lloyd, of the U.S. District Court in San Jose, wrote that "Veoh has a strong DMCA policy, takes active steps to limit incidents of infringement on its website and works diligently to keep unauthorized works off its site[.]" Veoh Networks, prior to the lawsuit being filed, disallowed the uploading of adult content by its subscribers, but the IO Group’s copyrighted material had already been uploaded prior to the policy change by Veoh.
YouTube’s Chief Counsel, Zahavah Levine, praised the courts decision hoping that it would have a strong influence in the outcome of the $1 billion lawsuit brought by Viacom, Inc. against YouTube’s parent company, Google. But Judge Lloyd cautioned that "the decision rendered here is confined to the particular combination of facts in this case and is not intended to push the bounds of the safe harbor so wide that less scrupulous service providers may claim its protection.” Viacom’s representatives in a statement are still contending that YouTube does not take reasonable steps in respecting the rights of copyright owners or creators. Many pundit’s feel that, the decision rendered by the court in San Jose, is good news for YouTube, and other similar service providers who operate in this spectrum of the Internet.
The DMCA provides very important security protection and three powerful anti-circumvention provisions relating to access controls and other technological protective measures used to protect copyrighted works. The DMCA provisions were intended to provide the protection necessary to encourage copyright owners to make their works available over the Internet. These provisions are subject to certain exemptions that are quite narrow in scope and often difficult to apply. Thus, the fact that Veoh was able to convince the court that they take "reasonable measures" to ensure that they are in compliance with all copyright laws, is a huge victory for that company, but, according to Judge Lloyds’ comments, service providers are not "out of the woods" yet, and need to clearly establish, define, and implement "Terms of Use and Acceptable Use" corporate policies for its subscribers.
To view the whole court decision, please click here: TechCrunch: Transcoding is not a crime…