Google, the company that owns YouTube, has achieved a decisive victory against Viacom. The online video giant did not commit copyright violations against Viacom, according to an American court.
The situation is well-known: Viacom filed a lawsuit against YouTube (and therefore Google) because the famous online video platform allegedly hosted hundreds of thousands of clips from television programs and music videos belonging to Viacom. Three years after the lawsuit for copyright infringement, the verdict was delivered by Louis Stanton, a federal judge in New York: YouTube had complied with intellectual property regulations, having demonstrated that it acted upon Viacom’s notifications at the time of the events.
What worked in YouTube’s favor was that in February 2007, Google received a list from Viacom containing all the “incriminated” videos (around 100,000 videos were mentioned). In response to this notification, Google actually removed all the videos cited by Viacom within 48 hours.
According to the judge, therefore, this cooperative attitude from Google and consequently YouTube does not go against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Viacom, obviously not satisfied with the ruling, may soon appeal. From Google‘s headquarters, however, satisfaction is palpable: “This is an important victory for us, but also for billions of users worldwide who use the Web to communicate and share content.”
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