An appellate remix in Viacom-YouTube lawsuit
A mixed ruling from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed in part a June, 2010, judgment in favor of YouTube in a lawsuit filed by Viacom. That lower court decision had been appealed by Viacom International Inc, The Football Association Premier League Ltd. and an array of television networks, movie studios, sports leagues and music publishers after YouTube Inc., YouTube LLC, and Google, Inc. prevailed in 2010 and the full decision in the latest twist in the case can be read here. In 2010, a federal district court in New York heard arguments regarding claims of direct and secondary copyright infringement, based on the display, public performance and reproduction of 79,000 clips on YouTube put up between 2005 and 2008. In its June 23 ruling, the district court granted summary judgment on all claims, finding the defendants had safe harbor protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. § 512. The appellate judge were asked to clarify the contours of the DCMA’s “safe harbor,” especially limits on the liability of online service providers (OSPs) for copyright infringement, occurring “by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider.” 17 U.S.C. § 512(c). Plaintiffs had sought statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c), or in the alternative, actual damages from the claimed...
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