Veoh, an internet media distribution company that competes with Hulu and YouTube, won the latest round in a long-running fight with Universal Music Group. Assuming your firm or company hasn’t blocked the site yet, this is good news for those of you who want to keep watching Paris Hilton’s My New BFF and 50 Cent’s The Money and the Power online.
As is typical with content providers, UMG believed that Veoh hosted infringing materials and otherwise facilitated infringement. UMG filed a motion for summary judgment, claiming that because Veoh converted the files from the format in which users uploaded to other formats, such as Flash, Veoh could not stand behind the Digital Millenium Copyright Act’s various safe harbor provisions. District judge Howard Matz of the Central District of California gave Veoh all of the safe harbors:
The four software functions that UMG challenges fall within the scope of § 512(c), because all of them are narrowly directed toward providing access to material stored at the direction of users. Both the conversion of uploaded files into Flash format and the “chunking” of uploaded files are undertaken to make it easier for users to view and download movies, and affect only the form and not the content of the movies; “streaming” and downloading merely are two technically different means of accessing uploaded videos.
As TechCrunch notes:
This is the second time a summary judgment has been denied to a company trying to sue Veoh for copyright infringement. (The last time it was a porn company). These orders are setting important legal precedents not just for Veoh, but for YouTube and others also facing DMCA lawsuits.
Representing the side of good and light and Nimrod Nation were Winston & Strawn’s Michael Elkin (La Sorbonne ‘77, l’Universite de Tours ‘78, Rutgers AB ‘79, Rutgers MSW ‘81, Brooklyn JD ‘84) and Thomas Lane (Hamilton AB ‘88, Tulane JD ‘91). Opposing your right to watch Sesame Street and The Dick Van Dyke Show are Steven Marenberg (Wesleyan BA ‘77, Chicago JD ‘80) and Eliot Brown (Harvard AB ‘85, Princeton MA ‘87, Harvard JD ‘90) of Irell & Manella.
Related posts:
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.