YouTube's legal victory supports Internet service providers

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Judge Stanton disagreed. He ruled that Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provided Internet service providers such as YouTube with a “safe harbor.” That is, they are protected from legal liability, if users put on their sites content that infringes on someone’s copyright.

As long as Internet service providers promptly remove such content when they are informed that it infringes, then they are not liable. The judge found that YouTube had shown sufficient diligence about copyright infringement because it promptly removed videos when it learned that they were copyright protected.

Of course, the ruling could be reversed on appeal. But, among litigators, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where Viacom’s appeal would have to be made, is known for taking a long time to deliberate and rule on cases. That means that Judge Stanton’s decision may be a precedent for some time.

Legal scholars say that Stanton’s decision will also be influential because it is so thoughtful and clearly worded. Other recent cases in this area of copyright law have been complicated. Their facts have been messy and the legal thinking muddled.

“[By contrast,] this opinion was very clean,” says Eric Goldman, an associate professor at Santa Clara University Law School. “This opinion was very clear from an expository standpoint. Future judges will say that this case tells us exactly what [Judge Stanton] was thinking. So I think the opinion will be persuasive to other judges.”

What will the decision mean as a practical matter? For years content owners have complained that Internet service providers don’t do enough to monitor and remove infringing content on their own. Content owners have repeatedly pressed Internet sites to bear more of the responsibility and cost of ascertaining what infringes and taking it off their sites. Customarily Internet service providers have responded by saying that, if they take the content down when they are informed that it infringes, then they are doing enough.

Someone has to pay the costs of monitoring content for infringement. It is something of a zero sum game. Some scholars see the YouTube case as an attempt by Viacom to shift these monitoring costs to YouTube and, by extension, other Internet companies. In this case Viacom was not able to shift that burden to YouTube.

“This case is going to defuse the pressures that content owners have been putting on Internet service providers [to monitor content for infringement],” says Goldman.

To understand the importance of this decision, others say, you have to contemplate what would have happened if Viacom had won.

What Viacom tried to do was, in effect, radically narrow the safe harbor provision, say open Internet advocates. If YouTube wouldn’t have been eligible for safe harbor, then lots of web sites would be without safe harbor protection too.

“This was an attempt to cut the guts out of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbor provision,” says David Sohn, the senior policy counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a Washington, DC-based pro-Internet organization. “This was very significant. The court reaffirmed that “safe harbor” means what it says, and that companies cannot lightly be deprived of safe harbor protection.”

It becomes enormously risky to host user-generated-content when companies operating those Internet platforms can be liable for massive damages whenever users [of the platforms] misuse them by uploading infringing content, they point out.

“A decision finding YouTube liable for one billion dollars in damages would really affect the whole Internet ecosystem,” says Sohn.