The court of appeals affirmed a district court judgment in part and remanded in part. The court held that an online video sharing service sued for music video copyright infringement enjoyed protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbor provision for infringement premised on users’ storage of material on the service’s system or network. The court held further that merely hosting a category of copyrightable content, such as music videos, with the general knowledge that one’s services could be used to share infringing material, is insufficient to meet the actual knowledge requirement under the DMCA safe harbor provision.
Universal Music Group (UMG), one of the world’s largest recorded music and music publishing companies, sued Veoh Networks for direct and secondary copyright infringement. The basis of the action was Veoh’s operation of a publicly-accessible website that allowed users to share videos with other users. UMG also alleged secondary liability claims against three of Veoh’s investors, but the district court dismissed those allegations for failure to state a claim.
