Google Beats Viacom!

“This just in: Google has beaten Viacom on summary judgment. The
judge has just ruled [PDF] that Google does qualify for DMCA safe
harbor protection. “General knowledge that infringement is
‘ubiquitous’ does not impose a duty on the service provider to
monitor or search its service for infringements,” the judge wrote.
So “the burden is on the owner to identify the infringement.” This
is huge.

“Of course, Viacom will appeal, they say. When I see people
ganging up on Google for whatever flaws they are looking at, notice
also please that Google fought for the Internet in this case, at
great expense. And they won a victory for all of us. In fact, I had
decided that if they lost, I would shutter Groklaw. It would have
been legally too risky to continue. So, thank you, Google, for not
letting the Hollywood content bullies destroy the Internet as we
know it.

“The operative paragraph in the judge’s order, to me, is this
one:

“The tenor of the foregoing provisions is that the phrases
“actual knowledge that the material or an activity” is infringing,
and “facts or circumstances” indicating infringing activity,
describe knowledge of specific and identifiable infringements of
particular individual items. Mere knowledge of prevalence of such
activity in general is not enough. That is consistent with an area
of the law devoted to protection of distinctive individual works,
not of libraries. To let knowledge of a generalized practice of
infringement in the industry, or of a proclivity of users to post
infringing materials, impose responsibility on service providers to
discover which of their users’ postings infringe a copyright would
contravene the structure and operation of the DMCA.”

Complete
Story