U.S. District Judge Of NY Says Google Did Not Violate Viacom's Copyrights

U.S. District Judge of New York ruled in favor of Google (in the case Viacom vs. YouTube), saying that YouTube wasn’t liable for infringement upon Viacom's copyrights after clips of MTV and Comedy Central circulated the video site. Viacom raised the complaint in April of 2008 and sought a minimum of $1 billion in damages.

The court agreed with Youtube that the company was protected by the safe-harbor provision of the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which states that the website owner is not liable for damages if promptly removing the material from the website upon request of the copyright owner.