Viacom International, Inc. v. Youtube, Inc.

Facts

The DMCA was enacted in 1998. Congress elected 'to leave current law in its evolving state and, instead, to create a series of 'safe harbor' for certain common activities of service providers.' There are four 'safe harbors' that allow qualifying service providers to limit their liability for claims of copyright infringement based on (a) 'transitory digital network communications,' (b) 'system caching,' (c) 'information residing on systems or networks at the direction of users,' and (d) 'information location tools.' To qualify for protection a party must in fact be a 'service provider,' defined, in pertinent part, as 'a provider of online services or network access, or the operator of facilities therefor.' A service provider must also satisfy 'conditions of eligibility,' including the adoption and reasonable implementation of a 'repeat infringer' policy that 'provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network.' A service provider must accommodate 'standard technical measures' that are 'used by copyright owners to identify or protect copyrighted works.' The safe harbor at issue is § 512(c), which covers infringement claims that arise 'by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider.' The safe harbor at issue is § 512(c), which covers infringement claims that arise 'by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider.' Id. § 512(c)(1). The § 512(c) safe harbor will apply only if the service provider: (A) (i) does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing; (ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or (iii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material; (B) does not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity; and (C) upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity. The service provider must also 'designate an agent to receive notifications of claimed infringement.' Actual knowledge of infringing material, awareness of facts or circumstances that make infringing activity apparent, or receipt of a takedown notice will each trigger an obligation to expeditiously remove the infringing material. D is a 'consumer media company' that 'allows people to watch, upload, and share personal video clips at www.YouTube.com.' Google acquired D in a stock-for-stock transaction valued at $1.65 billion. By March 2010, site traffic on D had soared to more than 1 billion daily video views, with more than 24 hours of new video uploaded to the site every minute. D's registration process requires the user to accept D's Terms of Use Agreement, which provides that the user 'will not submit material that is copyrighted . . . unless [he is] the owner of such rights or ha[s] permission from their rightful owner to post the material and to grant D all of the license rights granted herein.' Viewers are able to stream the contents. D uses a computer algorithm to identify clips that are 'related' to a video the user watches and display links to the 'related' clips. At issue are some 76,997 video clips identified by Ps for copyright violation. At the close of discovery, the parties cross-moved for partial summary judgment with respect to the applicability of the DMCA safe harbor defense. The Court granted summary judgment to D finding that YouTube qualified for DMCA safe harbor protection with respect to all claims of direct and secondary copyright infringement. The District Court held that 'the phrases 'actual knowledge that the material or an activity is infringing, and 'facts or circumstances' indicating infringing activity, describe knowledge of specific and identifiable infringements of particular individual items.' 'Mere knowledge of [the] prevalence of such activity in general,' the District Court concluded, 'is not enough.' P appealed. 

Issues

Rule of Law

Holding and Decision

Legal Analysis

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