In 2010, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Viacom v. YouTube, ruled against Viacom finding that YouTube was protected by the “safe harbor” provisions of Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) from copyright infringement liability resulting from the actions of its users.
In 2012, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a narrow part of Viacom’s case to proceeed, finding that YouTube was protected from copyright infringement liability in all cases except where it specifically knew of infringing material but also found that YouTube was not required to monitor its users’ activities. The appeals court kicked the case back to the district court asking it to consider the specific issue of whether YouTube was aware of alleged infringement of Viacom’s copyright.
The district court most recently required both Viacom and YouTube to provide evidence of the latter’s knowledge regarding the allegedly infringing video clips at issue in the case. YouTube submitted a list of more than 63,000 video clips for which it said it never received DMCA takedown notices, challenging Viacom to explain. Viacom couldn’t, so it attempted to deflect, bizarrely claiming YouTube had to prove its lack of knowledge about the allegedly offending video clips.
Corynne McSherry, writing for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), reports that US District Judge Louis Stanton “dismissed Viacom’s legal theory as ‘extravagant,’ ‘ingenious,’ and ‘anachronistic.'”
David Kravets, writing for Wired cites a passage in Stanton’s ruling where he writes that Viacom simply cannot produce “the kind of evidence that would allow a clip-by-clip assessment of actual knowledge.”
Viacom has consistently argued that YouTube had the responsibility to determine which video clips uploaded by its users infringed on Viacom’s copyright and take them down. Cory Doctorow, writing for BoingBoing, notes “Viacom’s internal memos showed that they themselves had paid dozens of companies to secretly upload Viacom videos disguised to look as leaked internal footage to YouTube, and that the company’s executives had viewed the suit as a way to seize control of YouTube from Google and run it themselves.”
Viacom says it will, once again, appeal. In an email to Jonathan Stempel, reporting for Reuters, Viacom spokesperson Jeremy Zweig writes, “This ruling ignores the opinions of the higher courts and completely disregards the rights of creative artists. A jury should weigh the facts of this case and the overwhelming evidence that YouTube willfully infringed.”