The legal battle between Google's YouTube video site ad Viacom is over for now, with U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton ruling in Google's favor.
In March 2007, Viacom accused Google of willfully infringing on Viacom movies and TV episodes.
According to the ruling, Judge Stanton didn't believe Viacom's stance that there isn't enough done to prevent YouTube users from uploading copyrighted movies and content. It was a legal tactic to try and force Google to better police its users from uploading copyrighted content -- and that includes a wider selection of paid content.
Google officials said this is a legal victory both for the company and "billions of people around the world who use the Web to communicate and share experiences with each other." This is significant because it sets a legal precedent for U.S. copyright law and the Internet, as other similar legal cases are possible.
The legal case is vital for online video, with YouTube and other sites closely watching to see if they need to change their business practices.
"What's at stake is the current state of play in user-generated content space," said Eric Goldman, High Tech Law Institute Director, in an interview. "If the court had said otherwise, nobody knows what would have happened. It could have resulted in having to re-engineer current industry practices."
Viacom may be a victim of its own stance on the anti-piracy front, as the company was able to have 100,000 copyrighted videos removed in February 2007. During the legal case, YouTube removed almost all of the requested videos, according to Judge Stanton, while the company adhered to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Viacom said the ruling was "fundamentally flawed," with an appeal expected for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
