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Viacom Loses Billion Dollar Lawsuit Against Google, Vows Revenge

by Amar Toor on June 24, 2010 at 09:45 AM

viacom logoGoogle dodged a major bullet yesterday, after successfully beating back a billion-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Viacom. But as YouTube's proud parent celebrated the decision, Viacom insisted that this case is far from over.

Arguing before a U.S. District Court in New York, Viacom had been seeking to prove that YouTube was guilty of massive copyright infringement and, in more colorful terms, "brazen disregard of the intellectual property laws." The District Court, though, saw things differently. Because YouTube works with companies like Viacom to protect copyrighted material, the court determined that the site deserves legal protection from claims of copyright infringement, as established under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). As proof of YouTube's cooperation, the court cited an example from 2007, when Viacom formally requested that the site remove about 100,000 copyright-protected videos from its platform. "By the next business day, YouTube had removed virtually all of them," the court pointed out.

Google was quick to herald the decision as "an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the Web to communicate and share experiences with each other." Viacom, of course, struck a slightly less enthusiastic note in its press statement: "We believe that this ruling by the lower court is fundamentally flawed and contrary to the language of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the intent of Congress, and the views of the Supreme Court as expressed in its most recent decisions." Viacom went on to state its determination to challenge the ruling before the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, adding that, "this decision gives us the opportunity to have the Appellate Court address these critical issues on an accelerated basis."

As long as YouTube continues to provide evidence of its cooperation with third-party companies, and its willingness to help protect intellectual property rights, it seems like it'll be difficult for any legal team to find evidence that convincingly implicates the site in copyright infringement. That, of course, won't stop Viacom from trying, and this probably won't be the last infringement case we see against YouTube. But yesterday's ruling can only bolster Google's defense, and that, in itself, is worthy of celebration. [From: Google and ArsTechnica]

Tags: copyright, CopyrightInfringement, DigitalMillenniumCopyrightAct, DMCA, google, IntellectualProperty, internet, lawsuit, top, viacom, web, youtube

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