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Legal
Universal lose Veoh claim
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 15 September 2009
So this is interesting, mainly because of the precedent it possibly sets for the ongoing MTV/YouTube feud.
Universal Music have lost a US legal challenge against Veoh, a YouTube rival who, the major label argued, was infringing copyrights by allowing punters to upload content without the content owner’s permission. Because, like YouTube, Veoh vow to remove any copyright infringing content if and when they are alerted to its presence on their system, the video platform’s owners argued they were protected by the so called ‘safe harbour’ clause in America’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Despite various technicalities explored in this, and an earlier similar infringement case pursued against Veoh by an adult entertainment company, the US court this week ruled the video website was, indeed, operating within the rules set down by the DMCA and could not be held liable for any infringing content that was put up on its system by users and which would be live for as long as it took for the content owner to issue a take down notice.
Universal has vowed to appeal the ruling. A statement from the major read: “The ruling today is wrong because it runs counter to established precedent and legislative intent, and to the express language of the DMCA. Because of this and our commitment to protecting the rights of our artists and songwriters who deserve to be compensated for the use of their music, we will appeal this ruling immediately. The balance between copyright holders and technology that Congress sought in enacting the DMCA has been upended by this decision”.
As I say, the most interesting element of the Universal v Veoh dispute is any precedent it might set that could affect the ongoing legal squabble between Google’s YouTube and MTV owners Viacom. The major record companies, of course, all did licensing deals with YouTube before any legal action could real be taken against the uber video sharing platform. Viacom, whose MTV brands arguably have most to lose from the growth of YouTube style websites given that they primarily target the youth demographic, have chosen not to do a licensing deal and instead to sue on similar grounds as to that used by Universal when suing Veoh.
Some might argue the Veoh ruling seriously hinders Viacom’s case against YouTube, even if Universal’s appeal was to be successful. Universal are likely to claim that, while they accept a decent take-down system is sufficient for a video sharing website to get safe harbour protection under the DCMA, that Veoh’s takedown system is far from being decent.
YouTube’s takedown system is generally seen has being decent, or at least it is now, even if it wasn’t in the video site’s early days. Plus the Google-owned service has been developing new technical systems that automatically spots content previously banned by a content owner from appearing on the site as it’s being uploaded by a user, so, in theory, can take it down before it’s even gone live, and without receiving a specific take-down notice from a content owner.
All of which means that even if Universal did successfully appeal the Veoh ruling, that wouldn’t overrule precedents already set that seemingly go very much in YouTube’s favour in the Viacom dispute.
