Judge: Veoh's Transcoding Is Not Piracy (PC Magazine)
Chloe Albanesius - PC Magazine Thu Aug 28, 8:09 AM ET
Online video site Veoh was handed a victory Wednesday when a California judge dismissed a copyright infringement case filed by adult entertainment company IO Group.
IO filed suit in 2006 after it discovered clips from 10 of its films on Veoh.com. Rather than notify Veoh of the possible infringement, however, IO immediately filed suit against the company.
Veoh, which has since banned adult material from its site, argued that it has adequate copyright protections in place and is protected by the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Judge Howard R. Lloyd with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California agreed.
"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," Judge Lloyd wrote in his decision.
"We are very pleased that Judge Lloyd has recognized Veoh's strict compliance with the DMCA and our dedication to providing a valuable service for users that respects the rights of content owners," Steve Mitgang, CEO of Veoh Networks, said in a statement.
Judge Lloyd pointed to Veoh's terms of use, which require users to register with the site and provides them with several warnings about copyrighted material during the upload process. Users can also flag videos which they believe infringe on copyrights.
"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," Lloyd wrote.
When Veoh receives a complaint about a user after a first warning has been issued, Veoh deletes the account and all videos uploaded by that user, blocks their e-mail address, and bans them from uploading the same video via digital fingerprinting, according to the suit.
Veoh has terminated about 1,096 accounts since its inception.
IO argued that Veoh does not police repeat infringers in a reasonable manner. Though the DMCA does not address what constitutes a reasonably implemented copyright system, the Ninth Circuit has ruled that a system is reasonable if it has a working notification system and a policy for handling complaints, the judge said.
IO said there is nothing stopping an infringer from signing up with a different name and e-mail address and re-uploading the offending content, but the court found that IO had no real proof that that was actually occurring.