Yesterday U.S. District Court Justice Harold R. Lloyd issued a summary judgement in the case of Io Group v. Veoh, deciding that Veoh qualifies for “Safe Harbor” under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.  This case may have an impact on an even bigger one: Viacom v. YouTube.

Io Group, which produces and distributes adult videos, sued video-sharing site Veoh over some copyrighted material uploaded to Veoh’s Web site.  Judge Lloyd neatly summed up its case against Veoh:

“[P]laintiff contends that, if Veoh cannot prevent infringement on its site given the current volume of its business, then Veoh should be required to either hire more employees or to decrease its operations and limit its business to a manageable number of users (whatever that number might be).  Its not-so-subtle suggestion is that, if Veoh cannot prevent infringement from ever occurring, then it should not be allowed to exist.”

Judge Lloyd made a disctinction between Veoh, which actively discourages sharing copyrighted material, and other, less-reputable services:

“Veoh is distinct from Napster in at least one significant respect.  Napster existed solely to provide the site and facilities for copyright infringement, and its control over its system was directly intertwined with its ability to control infringing activity … In fact, as virtually every interested college student knew — and as the program’s creator expressly admitted — the sole purpose of the Napster program was to provide a forum for easy copyright infringement.”

He went on to say that, “this court finds that no reasonable juror could conclude that a comprehensive review of every file [uploaded to Veoh] would be feasible.”  (Thanks for giving us some credit, judge!)

Finally, Judge Lloyd makes a statement that Google could also claim for YouTube:

“[T]he record presented shows that Veoh has taken down blatantly infringing content, promptly responds to infringement notices, terminates infringing content on its system and its users’ hard drives (and prevents that same content from being uploaded again), and terminates the accounts of repeat offenders … Once content has been identified as infringing, Veoh’s digital fingerprint technology also prevents the same infringing content from ever being uploaded again.  All of this indicates that Veoh has taken steps to reduce, not foster, the incidence of copyright infringement on its website.”

Compare this common-sense approach with that of the judge presiding over Viacom v. YouTube.

Google certainly was paying attention to this ruling.  It will certainly help their case.  However, Justice Lloyd did include a qualifier of sorts at the end of his decision:

“[T]he 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 than scrupulous service providers may claim its protection.”

For more commentary by a real lawyer, including the text of the summary judgment, visit TechCrunch.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on August 28, 2008 - 10:37 am

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