As reported by WebProNews, the Official YouTube Blog announced June 24 that they have emerged victoriously from their three year long battle over copyright infringement with Viacom.  The blog stated, “This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other.”

The suit began in 2007 and according to court records names Viacom, Comedy Partners, Country Music Television, Paramount Pictures Corporation and Black Entertianment Television as plaintiffs and Youtube and Google as defendants.  The plaintiff’s claimed that YouTube/Google was liable for copyright infrigement according to the document because they had knowledge of their users’ infringement and didn’t stop it and that they received benefits from doing so.

The court maintained that YouTube was protected by the “safe harbor” clause in the DMCA which protects a company’s liability for their users’ files that they store as long as they are not aware of the infringments and remove or disable the files if they become aware of them.  Such services are required to have an agent who receives notices of infringement and responds to them to be protected.

YouTube’s win was in part because after Viacom sent 100,000 take down notices on February 2, 2007, YouTube had already removed nearly all the videos by the next business day.  The court affirmed that providers like YouTube were not responsible for determining in advance whether videos were of copyrighted material.

You can read the entire court document at http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/press/pdf/msj_decision.pdf