The recent Viacom v. YouTube litigation was an opportunity to meaningfully clarify the contours of acceptable and unacceptable behavior by so-called “user-generated content” sites toward copyrighted works. Unfortunately, on June 23, a federal district judge in the Southern District of New York missed that opportunity, granting the video-sharing site YouTube (now owned by Google) a complete victory. The extreme ruling is the latest in a disturbing trend of one-sided interpretations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in favor of service providers, to the detriment of copyright holders.
The decision provides a cursory analysis of issues that warrant more rigorous examination. Moreover, the holding upsets the careful balance that Congress struck when it enacted the DMCA to update copyright law for the digital age and balance copyright protection with the operations of service providers. Although Viacom will appeal, and therefore the case is far from over, the ruling has the potential for far-reaching consequences to the extent it influences other courts and the behavior of service providers.
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