Digital Media

Update 3 p.m. PT: To include an updated comment from Google.

Google said on Friday that an error caused the search engine to remove The Pirate Bay from its search pages.

"Google received a (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take-down request that erroneously listed Thepiratebay.org, and as a result, this URL was accidentally removed from the Google search index," Google said in a statement. "We are now correcting the removal, and you can expect to see Thepiratebay.org back in Google search results this afternoon."

Later, Google updated it's statement: "The removal appears to be an internal error and not part of a DMCA request."

Separately, The Pirate Bay's site appeared down Friday afternoon at 1:15 p.m. PT, at least in many U.S. areas.

Google didn't provide any details about what caused the error but at this point it doesn't seem to be some kind of orchestrated effort to bring down The Pirate Bay--at least on Google's part. According to Google, it was just a goof.

The DMCA's safe-harbor provision is designed to shield Internet service providers from being held liable for copyright infringement committed by users. But the provision has a certain set of requirements that ISPs must meet, and one of them includes promptly removing infringing material.

The case is a bit ironic, in that it's well-established that The Pirate Bay does not store any unauthorized copies of films, music, TV shows, or other content.

Indeed, the service can help people find pirated content, but so can a lot of search engines, including Google. The notion that the Pirate Bay would be pulled down because of a single copyright claim is sort of humorous.

If that's all that was needed to have the site kicked off, it would have happened years ago. The music and film industries, as well as other copyright owners, have complained about The Pirate Bay for years.

Peter Sunde-Kolmisoppi told Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagblated that The Pirate Bay's attorney sent a letter to both Google and the companies that are suspected of being behind the allegations and demanded that the Pirate Bay be returned to Google's index. The Pirate Bay accused Google of censoring a competitor and of stifling free expression, the paper reported.

Scribd, an online publishing tool where users share their manuscripts and essays, while others post pirated copies of books, denied that the company encourages copyright infringement.

A lawsuit filed by author Elaine Scott on Friday alleged that Scribd violated Scott's copyright and those belonging to many others. According to a copy of the suit obtained by CNET News, Scott claimed that Scribd "shamelessly profits" from stolen works and "built a technology that's broken barriers to copyright infringement on a global scale."

On Sunday evening, Scribd issued a comment to CNET in response to the suit.

"Ms. Scott's lawsuit is without merit," Scribd said in its statement. "Scribd is an online service provider that complies with--and goes above and beyond--the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Scribd therefore is entitled to the full protection of the DMCA's safe harbor provisions."

By now, anyone following online copyright issues at YouTube, Veoh, Project Playlist, and many other sites knows that the DMCA's safe harbor provision is designed to protect Internet service providers from holding the bag for users who commit illegal acts.

The provision protects sites that meet its requirements. Scott claims Scribd fails to meet the requirements and the company says nonsense.

"Scribd does not want unauthorized content on our site," the company said. "We built the industry's leading (filtering) technology to prevent the upload of unauthorized documents. This is one of the reasons why best-selling authors and many of the world's largest publishers have chosen to put their works on Scribd."

Update 4:15 p.m.: To include comments from YouTube and Viacom.

A federal district court says Veoh, a Web video site that has come under legal fire from entertainment companies the past several years, is not liable for the copyright violations committed by its users, a decision that could help YouTube defend itself against Viacom's $1 billion copyright suit.

Universal Music Group, the largest of the four top record companies, accused Veoh of copyright violations in a lawsuit filed two years ago. But on Friday, U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz granted Veoh's motion for summary judgment, and ruled that the company is protected against such claims by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The decision would have meant more for Veoh if the video site was still relevant. The company has fallen on hard times since YouTube and Hulu took control of most of the online-video sector. Veoh's legacy, however, could be that it helped to establish that Internet service providers aren't liable for crimes committed by users.

"This decision reaffirms the judicial consensus and what we've known all along: the DMCA protects services like YouTube," Zahavah Levine, YouTube's chief counsel said. "With the DMCA, Congress intended to foster online platforms like YouTube, which empower users, offer new distribution channels for content owners, and respect copyright."

To be sure, Universal Music will file an appeal to Matz's decision and the case likely still has a long way to go.

"The ruling today is wrong because it runs counter to established precedent and legislative intent and to the express language of the DMCA," Universal Music said in a statement. "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."

Martz's decision is not binding on other courts and it must be noted that the case was heard in the Ninth District while YouTube's court fight is in the Second District.

"Our case is in a different forum, not bound by the Veoh case," said Michael Fricklas, Viacom's general counsel, in a statement. "We remain confident that we will prevail on the law and the facts. Today's decision contradicts the consensus that sites and copyright owners share the responsibility to use readily available tools to minimize copyright infringements."

How YouTube may benefit
YouTube and Google could be the big winner in all of this, said Fred von Lohmann, senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Viacom accused YouTube of infringing its copyright in a lawsuit filed in March 2007.

"Veoh's policies are very similar to YouTube's," von Lohmann said. "The judge gave Veoh a clean bill of health. I think the court in New York (where the Viacom-YouTube case is being heard) is going to take this ruling very seriously. The facts are very, very close."

In Martz's decision, he noted that this was not the first time a court has ruled that Veoh is covered by the DMCA's Safe Harbor provision.

"On August 27, 2008, Magistrate Judge Howard R. Lloyd, sitting in the Northern District of California, wrote that the court does not find that the DMCA was intended to have Veoh shoulder the entire burden of policing third-party copyrights on its Web site (at the cost of losing its business if it cannot)," Martz wrote in his decision.

"Rather, the issue is whether Veoh takes appropriate steps to deal with copyright infringement that takes place. The record presented demonstrates that, far from encouraging copyright infringement, Veoh has a strong DMCA policy, takes active steps to limit incidents of infringement on its Web site, and works diligently to keep unauthorized works off its Web site. In sum, Veoh has met its burden in establishing its entitlement to safe harbor for the alleged infringements here."

While the judge ruled against Universal Music group and delivered a blow to copyright owners, he also confirmed that such sites must take reasonable steps to stop infringement once they've been made aware of its existence on their sites.

The legal fight between Viacom and YouTube will likely go to trial sometime next year. Many observers thought that case would be the one to establish whether managers at YouTube and similar services would be required to police their sites. But YouTube vs. Viacom could be anticlimatic, according to von Lohmann.

"The ironic thing is that so much attention has been paid to the YouTube litigation," von Lohmann said. "But the law is actually being made in other cases because the YouTube case is turning into an eternal trench war. In the meantime, smaller companies like Veoh and Perfect 10 are defining the law. The courts have consistently given an interpretation (of the law) that has been in line with what Web 2.0 companies have been arguing."

A federal court has found enough evidence to decide that RealDVD, the software that enables users to copy DVDs and store digital duplicates on a hard drive, violates U.S. copyright law.

Facet, the DVD player that copied and stored digital movies, will not be hitting store shelves anytime soon.

(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)

U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction that will prevent RealNetworks from selling the $30 software until a jury can decide the issue. That will undoubtedly keep RealDVD and Facet, Real's prototype DVD player, off store shelves for an indefinite period. Facet also makes digital copies and stores them to a built in hard drive.

The decision represents a major victory for the film studios, which had accused Real of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and breach of contract in a lawsuit filed last fall. Had the decision gone against the film studios and its trade group, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), it would have been an affirmation that consumers have the right to copy their DVDs for personal use. Right now, when a DVD owner loses or breaks a disc, they conceivably must purchase another copy. RealDVD and Facet eliminate the need for discs once copies are made.

But the MPAA argued that Facet and RealDVD are pirate tools that enabled users to copy and redistribute movies and could cost the industry billions. The MPAA has maintained that under the DMCA, consumers do not have the right to copy films--ever.

"We are very pleased with the court's decision," MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said in a statement. "This is a victory for the creators and producers of motion pictures and television shows and for the rule of law in our digital economy. Judge Patel's ruling affirms what we have known all along: Real took a license to build a DVD-player and instead made an illegal DVD-copier."

Bart Williams, attorney who argued case for the studios.

(Credit: Munger, Tolles & Olson)

"We are disappointed that a preliminary injunction has been placed on the sale of RealDVD," Real said in a statement. The company that makes entertainment software said it would have more to say after it had reviewed Patel's decision.

The big question for Real is whether it has the stomach to continue the fight. The legal fees have already set Real back more than $6 million.

"RealDVD makes a permanent copy of copyrighted DVD content," Patel wrote in her decision, "and by doing so breaches its (Content Scramble System) License Agreement with the (DVD Copy Control Association, the group that oversees the protection of DVDs for the major Hollywood studios) and circumvents a technological measure that effectively controls access to or copying of the Studios' copyrighted content on DVDs."

In her decision, Patel made a play on words using Vegas--Real's code name for RealDVD--to illustrate how the software could lead to the mass pirating of movies.

"Had Real's products been manufactured differently, i.e., if what happened in Vegas really did stay in Vegas," Patel continued, "this might have been a different case. But, it is what it is. Once the distributive nature of the copying process takes hold, like the spread of gossip after a weekend in Vegas, what's done cannot be undone."

Patel's decision is unlikely to surprise anyone who followed the case. During last year's hearings on a temporary injunction and last spring's proceedings on the preliminary injunction, Patel appeared highly skeptical of Real's arguments.

In her questions to both sides' attorneys, Patel seemed concerned about the potential for people to use RealDVD and Facet, to copy rented discs without compensating the creators, a practice known as "rent, rip, and return."

One glaring hole in Real's argument was its assertions that RealDVD didn't circumvent ARccOS and RipGuard because they really aren't anticopying software; and that Real had licensed CSS, the technology designed to prevent unauthorized copying of DVDs, so it was essentially authorized to do what it wanted with it.

The MPAA crushed these arguments in proceedings. The studios showed that both ARccOS and RipGuard are anticopying technologies used by some of the major film studios as a layer of piracy protection in addition to CSS. The studios' lawyers produced documents that revealed ARccOS and RipGuard were effective enough copy protections to stymie Real's engineers, as well as a group of "Ukranian hackers," from cracking them.

One other important detail: ARccOS and RipGuard are not included in the CSS license. By circumventing the technology, Real had risked violating the DMCA, which prohibits the cracking of antipiracy technologies. And that's exactly what happened.

"Real was aware of ARccOS and RipGuard during the development of the RealDVD products," Patel wrote in her 58-page decision. "Real software engineers identified ARccOS and RipGuard as both copy protection systems and barriers to their development of a DVD copying device from the outset of the RealDVD project."

While the courtroom showdown was first billed as a fight over RealDVD, it soon became clear that what was really at stake for Real was Facet.

Real CEO Rob Glaser demonstrated the device in court last spring and showed how an owner could move between films--it holds more than 70--in a way similar to how someone scrolls through an iTunes playlist. I wrote that the device could have helped spur flagging DVD sales and given DVD collectors, such as myself, a way to revitalize their movie collections.

Hollywood, however, is working on its own programs to give consumers access to digital copies after buying a CD. But the studios typically want additional money for the digital copy.

So, now we wait to hear whether Real will carry on the fight. However it turns out, the company has earned kudos from anticopyright proponents for waging the campaign. The question is whether carrying the flag for the free-content crowd is enough of a payoff.

RealNetworks, the company behind the Real media player and Rhapsody music service, could this week become the latest courtroom conquest of the entertainment industry's fierce efforts to protect copyrights.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel is expected to hear closing arguments in proceedings that will determine whether to remove a ban on the sale of RealDVD. The $30 software enables users to create and store copies of DVDs to their computer hard drives.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the trade group representing the six largest film studios, filed suit last September to stop the sale of RealDVD and accused Real of copyright infringement and breach of contract. RealDVD and Facet, a proposed DVD player that can copy and store films, would hand users the ability to copy rented discs without paying a cent for them. The practice is known as "rent, rip, and return."

Real attorneys argued in court that the company operated within the law and that consumers have the legal right to backup copies of their media. Hollywood disagrees. "Fair use" proponents have kept a close eye on the case because a favorable decision for Real might bolster consumer rights.

But they're likely to be disappointed. Four days of testimony in a San Francisco federal court showed Real's case is trudging on very shaky legal ground. In addition to offering little evidence that it did not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Real's arguments that it obtained a license to use the studio's encryption technology and therefore owned the right to copy DVDs appeared to be overwhelmed by the MPAA's evidence to the contrary.

What might be most important about this case, a courtroom victory for the MPAA could put the kibosh on Facet, the device Real hopes is representative of the next-generation DVD player. Facet, which relies on the RealDVD software to make copies, can store up to 70 movies and would retail for about $300. In court, Real CEO Rob Glaser demonstrated the device and it hops between movies and television shows as easy as an iPod flips between songs.

Facet provides the kind of functionality that consumers want and could help rejuvenate slumping DVD sales, some observers say. The device, however, may never be sold in your local Best Buy for five reasons:

The rear view of Facet, a DVD-copying disc player that Hollywood says would cost it millions in pirated movies.

(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET Networks)

Not licensed to copy DVDs: In court, Real argued that the MPAA's breach of contract claims are baseless because the DVD Copy Protection Association, a group that includes film studios and DVD makers created to protect discs from piracy, issued it a license to use the organization's DVD Content Scramble System (CSS). This is the studio's encryption technology designed to prevent piracy.

When RealDVD copies movies, it never cracks the encryption, according to experts called to testify by Real. The MPAA's witnesses argued that the CSS license gives Real permission only to playback DVDs, not to copy them. Marsha King, a retired vice president at Warner Bros., testified that the whole purpose of the DVD-CCA licensing was to prevent consumer copying. "The studios were adamant that no copy be placed on the (computer) hard drive," she told the court.

Cracking ARccOS and RipGuard violates DMCA: Perhaps the weakest area of Real's defense is the circumvention of ARccOS (Advanced Regional Copy Control Operating Solution) and RipGuard.

The MPAA says these are anticopying technologies used by some of the major film studios as another layer of piracy protection in addition to CSS. They're not included in the CSS license. This means that even if the CSS license gave Real permission to copy, it wouldn't protect Real's cracking of ARccOS and RipGuard. Circumvention of copy protections violates the DMCA.

Real denied ARccOS or RipGuard are copy-protection measures. Douglas Dixon, one of Real's technology experts, testified both technologies are ineffective. This was one of the reasons the studios rarely used them, he said.

To illustrate his point, Dixon said Sony Pictures used ARccOS or RipGuard on just four film titles last year. Real's argument was this: if a copy protection isn't effective then it isn't really protecting anything and is not covered by the DMCA.

The irony is that Arccos and RipGuard were effective enough to foil Real's months-long attempt to crack them--starting in 2007--court documents showed. The copy protections even stumped Rocket Division, a company hired by Real to decrypt ArccOS and RipGuard, and a group the MPAA calls a "Ukranian hackers."

"Been...fighting with it for two weeks and no big success yet," wrote one of Rocket Division's managers in an e-mail to a Real executive. "With Arccoss the task appeared to be a little bit -- a little harder than we thought."

The studios told Patel that Real's argument that a copy protection needs to be impossible to break for it to be covered by the DMCA isn't logical. Why would unbreakable encryption need a law banning circumvention? The DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions are designed to cover all copy protections, MPAA lawyers said.

Studios could lose millions: Claims by the MPAA that RealDVD could cause significant financial harm were less convincing when the case was just about the software. With scores of similar products that cost nothing and were readily available online, why would anyone pay $30 for technology that were restricted by copy controls? RealDVD allows a user to watch a copied movie on five individual devices while copies made from software such as HandBrake are free of such limitations.

Then, Real's efforts to develop Facet surfaced and that changed the picture.

RealDVD was only one part of Real's DVD-copying strategy. The prize for Real was selling a box that copied and stored movies. Glaser acknowledged during the hearing that Facet offers no protection against piracy other than presenting a notice urging users not to copy movies they don't own.

Judge appears skeptical: Judge Patel has indicated several times that she isn't buying Real's story.

After Glaser outlined his company's attempts to stop Facet users from pirating films with little more than strong language, Patel hurumphed "Do you think this will be more effective than 'Just Say No?" This was a reference to the anti-drug campaign launched by the Reagan administration that was derided by critics for being naive and ineffective.

Last fall, when Patel halted sales of RealDVD, she told lawyers from both sides that she had questions about whether the software could enable mass copyright infringement. During opening arguments in the injunction hearing, one of Real's lawyers suggested that the company was in the right because it helped consumers backup their films.

"It's even more attractive to consumers to get everything for free," Patel said, in a seemingly sarcastic remark.

Real is grasping at legal straws: By accusing the studios of antitrust violations late in the process, Real is signaling that the company is less than confidant in it's case. In what appears to be a "Hail Mary" legal maneuver, Real claimed last week in a court filing that the studios are a cartel and that the CSS licensing agreement is proof they are guilty of boycotting Real.

This is a little late for Real to be raising these issues. The company could have made the claims at any time since September. Neither the CSS license, nor the studios relationship to it, is new.

Regardless of where Real's claims go, antitrust cases take years to litigate and will be unlikely to help RealDVD or Facet reach the market any time soon.

One of revelations that surfaced following last week's report that AT&T was helping the recording industry fight illegal file sharing was how differently Internet service providers interpret U.S. copyright law.

CNET News reported that AT&T has begun sending warning letters to customers accused of illegal file sharing by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as part of a "trial program." The letters began going out two weeks ago.

What was obvious after the story received wide attention was how much confusion there is about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the law that is supposed to help ISPs, Web services, and copyright owners navigate online copyright issues.

AT&T and Comcast, which also acknowledged last week it has sent warning letters to customers accused of copyright infringement, appear to be issuing these letters even though the DMCA doesn't require such action, according to copyright attorneys. At the same time, some ISPs may not be protecting copyright owners to the degree called for by the DMCA, specifically when dealing with "repeat infringers."

What it boils down to is some ISPs appear to be picking and choosing which parts of the law to adhere to in order to serve two separate groups. Those broadband providers trying to walk the line between not completely angering customers and doing just enough to appease copyright owners may be pleasing no one.

Nowhere in the DMCA does the law call on ISPs to send warning notices to customers on behalf of copyright owners, said Fred von Lohmann, senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for the rights of Web users. Ben Sheffner agrees. He's a former copyright attorney for Fox and NBC Universal who acknowledges being "very sympathetic" to copyright owners.

The two lawyers typically oppose each other on copyright issues but they agree on that point. They say the DMCA provides different "safe harbors" for specific kinds of Web services. Video sites such as YouTube and Veoh are required to notify users who are accused of infringing by a copyright owner. ISPs, on the other hand, aren't obliged under the law to send notices, say Sheffner and von Lohmann.

AT&T didn't respond to questions about why it chose to send letters. The nation's largest ISP, however, has commented on the issue of service interruptions. To anyone who would listen last week, the company pledged never to shut off a customer's Internet access unless ordered by a judge.

This isn't exactly what the big recording companies want to hear. They said in December that they had planned to recruit ISPs into joining their antipiracy fight. The RIAA said no longer would it file lawsuits against individuals in an effort to discourage people from sharing songs illegally.

The music industry has instead lobbied broadband providers to adopt a "graduated response" to file sharing. This calls for ISPs to gradually increase pressure on repeat offenders. The RIAA would like it if ISPs eventually terminated service for chronic copyright violators but the group never said termination was an absolute requirement.

But here is what's interesting about that. The DMCA section 512(i) says a service provider must "implement a policy of terminating in appropriate circumstances the accounts of subscribers who are repeat infringers."

AT&T's read on this part of the DMCA, according to one of the company's executives, is that only the courts can determine whether someone is a "repeat infringer."

The "repeat infringer" provision applies to all service providers, YouTube as well as AT&T, said von Lohmann. But he also said that AT&T is correct to leave the determination of who violates the law up to judges and not entertainment executives.

He said if accusations made by music and film companies were the only proof needed to shut off someone's Internet access, then lawmakers would have specified that in the DMCA.

"People shouldn't lose their Internet access without due process," von Lohmann said.

As part of a plea to lawmakers in New Zealand to overturn a new pro-copyright law, Google claims that most takedown notices are bogus.

According to a story in PC World, Google says 57 percent of the takedown notices it has received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act were sent by businesses trying to undermine a competitor.

About 37 percent of the notices weren't valid copyright claims, Google wrote.

New Zealand is considering whether to force Internet service providers to cut off Web access to those accused of violating copyright law. Google opposes the plan.

The law would "undermine the incredible social and economic benefits" of the Web, Google told the lawmakers, and added that service termination is "disproportionate to the harm of copyright infringement online."

Google did not respond to an interview request.

I know many at the major film studios and music labels who would make the counterargument that cutting off Web access is not in any way out of line for punishing intellectual-property theft.

What Google was trying to prove with the figures is that with such a law in place, Web users could lose Internet access on "mere allegation."

Hollywood isn't suing RealNetworks over piracy--that's just a smokescreen, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The group that advocates for the rights of Internet users said in a blog post Friday night that the the primary reason the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed a copyright suit against RealNetworks and is trying to halt the sale of the RealDVD software is to make sure the company, and anyone else wishing to build movie players, gets Hollywood's permission first.

"It has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with controlling innovation," said Fred von Lohmann, EFF's senior attorney.

The studios accused RealNetworks in a copyright suit of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and breaching its contract with the DVD Copy Control Association, the group that oversees the licenses that manufacturers need to build DVD players. On Tuesday, Hollywood convinced U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel to keep RealDVD off the market until November 17 at the earliest.

The studios told the judge that RealDVD enables consumers to build huge film libraries without paying a cent. They just need to rent a movie and use RealDVD to copy and store the material to their hard drives. Lawyers for the MPAA described the "rent, rip and return" scenario and told the judge this could cost the film industry billions. But in his post, von Lohmann points out what many others have already noted: there is software readily available on the Internet that copies and stores films on hard drives. Most of it is unencumbered with any of the copy protections found on RealDVD.

"Hollywood can't possibly believe that the $30, DRM-hobbled RealDVD software represents a piracy threat," von Lohmann wrote. The studios are using the lawsuit to "send a message about what happens to those who innovate without permission in a post-DMCA world."

The licensing agreements tech firms are required to sign before making movie players are a means of control, said von Lohmann. The licenses "define what the devices can and can't do thereby protecting Hollywood business models from disruptive innovation," he said. Representatives from RealNetworks and the MPAA could not be reached Friday.

Watermarks and DRM
The licenses also give Hollywood the power to ask a that tech companies help in the fight against piracy, says von Lohmann.

"In the course of these years-long negotiations, Hollywood has managed to wrest several important concessions from technology vendors," von Lohmann wrote. They "include requiring that computers do watermark detection to spot pirated copies when reading data from Blu-ray discs, and imposing DRM on resulting copies."

Why RealDVD is so threatening to the studios is that RealNetworks has the potential to start a rebellion among gadget makers. The company is thumbing its nose at Hollywood's licensing deals and telling the courts that it only needs to protect the DVD's contents, which RealDVD does. If RealNetworks is allowed to build a player without a license, then others will follow. Hollywood wants to avoid that at all costs, according to von Lohmann.

"By reading the existing CSS license carefully," von Lohmann wrote, "Real found a way to create a new product category without first getting permission from the Hollywood studios."

He suggests that Hollywood isn't against allowing people to back up their DVDs. He said we might see products that enable people to make copies. It's just that the studios want to share in the profits made by such products.

RealNetworks and the MPAA aren't due in court against until mid-November.

Updated at 12:11 p.m. PDT with comment from a Viacom spokesman.

Video-sharing site Veoh defeated a copyright infringement lawsuit Wednesday in federal court, potentially giving Google's YouTube a tool in its defense against a $1 billion lawsuit filed by Viacom, according to a report posted on PaidContent.org.

Veoh was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit in 2006 by the Io Group, an adult entertainment company, but it defended its actions, citing provisions within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That provision calls for a party to remove copyrighted material from its Web site, when notified by the copyright holder.

A judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, Calif., found that Veoh was not liable for hosting copyrighted videos that its users uploaded to its site because the company used an automated process to post videos and did not play an active role in getting the material onto its site. The court also found that Veoh removed the material when informed by the copyright holder, putting it in compliance with a "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA law, according to the report.

The ruling may bolster Google's efforts to defend its YouTube video-sharing site against Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit. In a post in The Wall Street Journal, Google issued this statement:

It is great to see the court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights...YouTube has gone above and beyond the law to protect content owners while empowering people to communicate and share their experiences online.

The Google-Viacom case is still pending.

A Viacom spokesman, however, said the ruling does nothing to change the company's stance on the legality of YouTube's operations.

Even if the Veoh decision were to be considered by other courts, that case does nothing to change the fact that YouTube is a business built on infringement that has failed to take reasonable measures to respect the rights of creators and content owners. Google and YouTube have engaged in massive copyright infringement--conduct that is not protected by any law, including the DMCA.