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Documents Surface in Dispute between Viacom and YouTube
Documents were released in the heated battle between Viacom Inc. and Google Inc.’s YouTube service. The three-year old case, being heard at the U.S. Federal Court for the Southern District of New York, is an example of the brewing tension between media and technology companies.
The released documents include certain memos and emails from YouTube which Viacom is using to argue that YouTube either actively encouraged the distribution of materials infringing copyright law or that it did not quickly remove such materials. Particularly, Viacom intends to rely on the precedent set by Grokster, where it was decided that the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act would not shield the peer-to-peer service because it actively facilitated the infringement of copyright.
Google replied that it never encouraged copyright infringement and that Viacom secretly uploaded infringing materials on YouTube for the purpose of its claim. Furthermore, Google is relying on a precedent set by Veoh Networks Inc., which shields Internet services from liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if they have an automated process for users to upload their files. Viacom retorts that Veoh Networks Inc. was wrongly decided or is inapplicable to the case at hand.
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