After three years, Viacom has lost their lawsuit suing Google’s video sharing website YouTube for massive copyright infringment and $1 billion in damages. The presiding judge, Louis Stanton, has agreed almost entirely with Google’s defense, deciding that legislation in place to deal with online copyright violations sided with Google.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was ratified in 1998, protects web services that don’t know about specific examples of copyright infringement. Despite Viacom proving that Google was well aware that their material was being uploaded to the site illegally, Stanton has ruled that, based on the DMCA, knowing that it is taking place in general is not misconduct on their part, and that Google only acted illegally if they hadn’t responded to specific infringement claims. Given YouTube’s somewhat trigger-happy ‘take a video down, ask questions later’ attitude to DMCA claims made against videos, it has been ruled that Google have acted precisely as they should have.

This is not an excuse to go upload the upcoming episodes of Futurama (Viacom own Comedy Central) however, as to remain within the law Google must continue endeavouring to follow up any DMCA claims and take an active role in seeking out and removing YouTube videos that infringe on copyright. Nevertheless, this is a great relief for Google as, had Viacom won, the floodgates would undoubtedly be open to any and all content providers that wanted a piece of the action, given that a staggering amount of YouTube videos violate copyright and not just from Viacom.