YouTube vs Viacom Lawsuit Thrown Out

In a battle between the companies dating back to 2007, today a judge has rendered a decision to throw out Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube because the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement.  What exactly does that mean?  It means that, once YouTube is notified of infringement, they must act and take down the infringing videos.

So far, YouTube has complied with all of the notices.  In fact, the judge found that while there were a substantial number of infringing videos on YouTube, they did in fact take them down when notified.  The judge goes on to point out one instance in 2007 where Viacom gave YouTube a single takedown notices for 100,000 videos and by the next day they were taken down.

Regardless of how silly the lawsuit may have seemed, especially since YouTube had been compliant with the DMCA and reports of Viacom uploading their own videos to YouTube.  This is a huge win for not only YouTube but for the web as a whole when it comes to the DMCA.

Update: For more information see Foley & Lardner’s newsletter publication on the subject matter.