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Judge Howard Lloyd of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a copyright infringement case against Veoh, a video sharing site, ruling that the DMCA does not require such sites from reviewing the content they host for potential infringement. The judge said, “The DMCA was intended to facilitate the growth of electronic commerce, not squelch it. The court finds no reasonable juror could conclude that a comprehensive review of every file would be feasible.”

TechCrunch summarizes the court’s decision, saying that online video sites are protected under the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA if they:

• Provide adequate notice to users that uploading copyrighted material is prohibited
• Swiftly comply with DMCA takedown notices “on the same day the notice is received (or within a few days thereafter).”
• Use fingerprinting and other technology to detect copyrighted material, even if the methods are flawed.
• Take measures to control infringing users. Specifically, infringing accounts need to be terminated and the email banned from any new accounts. The court held that IP address banning was not neccesary: “…Io has presented no evidence suggesting that tracking (or verifying) users’ actual identity or that blocking their IP addresses is a more effective reasonable means of implementation.”
• Transcoding files to Flash format does not put the files in the site’s control; they are still protected by the DMCA safe harbor (see previous post).
• Sites are encouraged to spot check videos, and if they do, to remove content that is likely infringing.
• Sites are NOT required to check every video. The court said “this court finds no reasonable juror could conclude that a comprehensive review of every file would be feasible. Even if such a review were feasible, there is no assurance that Veoh could have accurately identified the infringing content in question.”
• It’s important to have lots of non-infringing content. The court noted that Veoh had received DMCA notices on only about 7% of its content. This helped its argument that it was different than Napster, which “existed solely to provide the site and facilities for copyright infringement…the sole purpose of the Napster program was to provide a forum for easy copyright infringement.”

This would appear to be a set back for Viacom in their case against YouTube. Viacom immediately released the following statement, which sounds like they are in complete denial:

“Even if the Veoh decision were to be considered by other courts, that case does nothing to change the fact that YouTube is a business built on infringement that has failed to take reasonable measures to respect the rights of creators and content owners. Google and YouTube have engaged in massive copyright infringement – conduct that is not protected by any law, including the DMCA.”

It’s unlikely that this is the end of the case, as this was simply a district court ruling and is likely to be appealed. It is, however, a win for websites who rely upon the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. The full ruling is below:

Veoh v IO Group – Free Legal Forms