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Viacom's 1st Amended Complaint and YouTube/Google's Answer - updated, both as text

By Pamela Jones et al.

I thought you might like to see the actual filings in the Viacom v. YouTube/Google litigation. In April, Viacom filed a First Amended Complaint [PDF] and YouTube/Google has now filed its Answer [PDF].

If you'd like to see the original complaint and answer from 2007, for comparison purposes, we have it as text here on Groklaw. I think what it means is that Google has decided not to settle. In fact, they just promised to take this case to the US Supreme Court, if necessary. I don't expect that to be necessary, since Viacom is essentially asking the court to rewrite the DMCA safe harbor provision, and rewriting the law is exactly what courts are not supposed to do.

So what's new? Viacom tried to get the court to let it amend its complaint to assert a claim for punitive damages, if they elect after trial to claim actual damages and profits instead of statutory damages, which the court refused to let them do:

Common-law punitive damages cannot be recovered under the Copyright Act.

Hollywood is forever trying to extend copyright law, it seems. One of the YouTube/Google defenses is copyright misuse, and that's pretty much what it is, trying to claim more protection than copyright law gives you. You can read the Order [PDF] for yourself. You can see in the footnote on the first page that what Viacom plaintiffs were allowed to add, without opposition from YouTube/Google, were a claim of distribution and a request for a jury trial, something the defendants also asked for. The Order also explains well about choosing statutory or actual damages under Copyright Law, if you are curious, since you can see in the First Amended Complaint that Viacom asks for one or the other, depending on how it all plays out at trial.

Full post as published by Groklaw on May 27, 2008 (boomark / email).