In a first-of-its kind decision, a California federal court has dismissed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against online video-sharing site Veoh Networks. IO Group, an adult entertainment company, filed the suit against Veoh, alleging the site displayed its content in violation of copyright laws. But Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd of the U.S. District Court in San Jose ruled against the gay-porn distributor on Wednesday.
IO Group’s suit is not unlike Viacom’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against Google-owned YouTube. In fact, MySpace, MP3tunes, Hi5, Stage6 and several other sites are facing similar battles over user-generated content.
Could this ruling be a boon for these sites? Or is the ruling merely an isolated incident in a California trial court? Google and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are betting on the former.
Web 2.0 Required Reading
EFF Legal Analyst Fred von Lohman said the ruling should be required reading for the executives of every Web 2.0 business that relies on user-generated content. The key to Veoh’s victory, he said, was its scrupulous attention to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbors.
“Veoh responded to compliant DMCA takedown notices on a same-day basis, it notified users of its policies against copyright infringement, it registered a copyright agent with the copyright office, it terminated users who were repeat infringers and blocked new registrations from the same e-mail addresses, it used hashes to stop the same infringing videos from being uploaded by other users,” von Lohman wrote in the EFF blog.
As von Lohman sees it, Judge Lloyd’s ruling debunks some of the favorite arguments of entertainment-industry lawyers and gives YouTube a boost in its billion-dollar battle against Viacom.
YouTube’s Repeat Infringer Dilemma
But the Google case is a little different. While the California court did spell out that there is no affirmative obligation for service providers to track users or police their sites, the context of…