Veoh wins copyright case, YouTube's lawyers cheer

By Eriq Gardner

A California district court has given Veoh a big victory in defending claims by Universal Music Group that the video sharing website didn't do enough to police copyrighted content on its servers.

Federal judge Howard Matz ruled on summary judgement that Veoh is entitled to safe harbor protection under 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a provision that limits the liability of ISPs that dutifully respond to notices by copyright holders of infringing works.

Here's the judge's summary judgment order.

In September 2007, UMG sued Veoh, claiming that the website was hosting copyrighted material. Pressed to get specific, UMG produced a list of approximately 7,800 allegedly infringing videos. Some of those videos had already been removed, identified by an outside technology filtering service used by Veoh. The rest were scrubbed from Veoh's server, and the company claimed they were afforded protection by 512(c) after expeditiously removing the material upon notice.

Last December, Judge Matz ruled that Veoh was eligible for protection, and Veoh moved for summary judgment that it satisfied statutory requirements. On Friday, the court agreed.

The decision is good news for other websites like YouTube, currently facing its own battles against copyright holder claims. A federal court has now confirmed that 512(c) can shield websites from liability, even if copyrighted materials pass through filters, so long as the website has policies and procedures and take reasonable steps to clean up piracy. The judge's decision might now become a road map for other ISPs to avoid legal trouble and precedent for those taken to court.