vRRitti.com, providing sentiency

9th Circuit has affirmed the lower court’s ruling and noted that Veoh, indeed, was perfectly legal. The ruling is pretty thorough and comprehensive and dismisses some of the ridiculous claims we’ve see here at times.

First, it notes that Veoh is clearly protected by the DMCA. Some (including UMG) have argued repeatedly that because Veoh (and others) don’t just “store” the content, but process it for display/performance, that this goes beyond the DMCA protections.The court notes that, if this interpretation is accurate, it makes much of the rest of Section 512(c) of the DMCA totally meaningless — and that doesn’t make any sense.

Furthermore, it points out that it would be kind of silly to suggest the DMCA only protects storage but never access.

The court educated UMG to the fact that, you know, not all music online is infringing.

Then the court points out that Congress’ expressed purpose behind the DMCA was to “facilitate making available quickly and conveniently via the Internet . . . movies, music, software, and literary works” and that’s “precisely the service Veoh provides.”

The court makes a key point that we’ve discussed plenty of times: the only one who really knows if the material is infringing is the copyright holder:

Copyright holders know precisely what materials they own, and are thus better able to efficiently identify infringing copies than service providers like Veoh, who cannot readily ascertain what material is copyrighted and what is not.

Congress made a considered policy determination that the “DMCA notification procedures [would] place the burden of policing copyright infringement — identifying the potentially infringing material and adequately documenting infringement — squarely on the owners.” of the copyright. 

The court goes on to remind UMG that it also doesn’t own all rights to every artist signed to the label. UMG had argued that because Veoh ads popped up on searches for UMG artists, that Veoh knew it was infringing. But the court notes that’s crazy.

First, Congress explicitly stated in three different reports that the DMCA was intended to “protect qualifying service providers from liability for all monetary relief for direct, vicarious and contributory infringement.” …. Under UMG’s interpretation, however, every service provider subject to vicarious liability would be automatically excluded from safe harbor protection. Second, Congress made clear that it intended to provide safe harbor protection not by altering the common law vicarious liability standards, but rather by carving out permanent safe harbors to that liability for Internet service providers even while the common law standards continue to evolve.

Finally, the court also soundly rejects UMG’s attempt to bring Veoh’s investors into the lawsuit for vicarious and contributory infringement, as well as inducement. The problem here is that since Veoh was protected by the DMCA there was no infringement that its investors could be guilty of secondarily helping to proceed:

It is well-established that “[s]econdary liability for copyright infringement does not exist in the absence of direct infringement . . . .” 

More:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111220/11021717143/veoh-still-perfectly-legal-also-still-dead-due-to-bogus-copyright-lawsuit.shtml