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Legal
Universal v Veoh appeal process begins
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 22 July 2010
YouTube rival Veoh has warned the US’s Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals that if they rule in favour of Universal Music in the two companies’ ongoing legal dispute, then the precedent set would “wreak havoc on a variety of new media portals like Yahoo!, Google and Facebook”.
As previously reported, video sharing website Veoh was sued by Universal Music for copyright infringement because it allows users to upload music videos containing the major’s content, even though, unlike YouTube, the video site doesn’t have any music licences.
Veoh argued that they removed any infringing content as soon as they were made aware of it and that, therefore, they were protected by the safe harbour clauses in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Universal disputed Veoh’s interpretation of the DMCA on this issue, and questioned the competencies of the web company’s take-down system.
The case was particularly interesting in that it had many similarities with the bigger Viacom v YouTube case, and therefore when Veoh defeated Universal’s litigation last September some claimed the ruling did not bode well for MTV owner’s Viacom. And correctly, as it turned out, because a judge has subsequently sided with YouTube in that dispute.
Nevertheless, Universal appealed last year’s ruling, and both sides have now submitted written arguments to the appeals court, which is expected to hold a hearing on the case in the autumn.
The major argue that Veoh has duty to play a more proactive role in policing the uploading of unlicensed content to its servers. Veoh counter that, given the number of videos being uploaded, that just isn’t feasible. Universal might respond by calling on Veoh to introduce the sort of technology-based content filters that are being developed and used by YouTube.
It will be interesting to see how this one turns out, and whether that will have any impact on Viacom’s appeal in the YouTube case. If the outcome of Universal v Veoh v.2 is that the video site has an obligation to introduce YouTube-style copyright filters to enjoy safe harbour protection under the DMCA, then Viacom might still have a case for getting damages out of Google and YouTube, for the infringement that occurred before they starting introducing their content filtering technology.
Veoh is now owned by Qlipso. The video site was bought by the Israeli tech company after its original owners came close to bankruptcy earlier this year. At the time one board member of Veoh claimed the cost of the Universal litigation was what took the company to the brink.
