Veoh wins DMCA safe harbour ruling

ONLINE VIDEO file-sharing service Veoh won an important court ruling last week that it's not liable for storing copyrighted media content, due to the safe harbour provision of the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

In a case of the big US media players fighting amongst themselves, Universal Music Group had sued video-sharing website Veoh – a creature of media giant Time Warner and former Disney CEO Michael Eisner – over alleged copyright infringement by its file-sharing users.

US District Court Judge Howard Matz ruled (PDF) that the federal DMCA's safe harbour section protects Internet services such as Veoh from civil liabilities "for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the discretion of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider."

In his order denying Universal's motion for partial summary judgment, Judge Matz noted that, in order to be protected by the DMCA's safe harbour language, a service such as Veoh must not have "actual knowledge" that the materials at issue are infringing copyrights and crucially "must expeditiously remove or disable access to material if it is notified that the material is infringing or is the subject of infringing activity."

Veoh's legal victory is only the second time that a federal judge has ruled that the DMCA's safe harbour provision protects online video file-sharing services. Similar legal cases are pending against other media sharing web services including MP3tunes, Myspace, Youtube and others.

Though this ruling doesn't establish precedent, it may be cited in those cases. µ

L'Inqs
Wired
Electronic Frontier Foundation