In a case between adult entertainment sit Io Group and Veoh, a California court has ruled in Veoh’s favor, saying that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act does not make sharing sites solely responsible for their content.
The adult entertainment site Io Group sued Veoh for not doing enough to prevent 10 of their videos from being posted on the site. But Io did not notify Veoh of the infringement before filing the suit, and Veoh had already banned all sexual content and taken down the videos in question.
“The DMCA was intended to facilitate the growth of electronic commerce, not squelch it,” Judge Howard Lloyd of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said. “The court finds no reasonable juror could conclude that a comprehensive review of every file would be feasible.”
The ruling could provide significant fodder in a testy and far-from-resolved fight between content owners and media sharing sites, in which third parties (you and me) take from the former, feed the latter and sometimes share things we don’t own with everyone. At issue is whether hosting sites should or even can proactively monitor all uploaded content, and whether, if uploads of illegal content cannot be prevented or at least quickly taken down, they are a legally responsible entity.
I guess this will help out Google with the Viacom case. Both Google and Viacom have released statements. You can check out the Wired article if you want more info.