Intellectual Property Law

Text of Io v Veoh DMCA Ruling and EFF Commentary

By Marty Schwimmer

EFF: "Required Reading for "User-Generated Content" Sites":

In an important ruling handed down yesterday, a federal district court threw out a copyright infringement suit brought by adult video producer Io Group against Veoh, concluding that the video hosting site qualifies for the DMCA safe harbor. The ruling should be required reading for the executives of every "Web 2.0" business that relies on "user-generated content."

Veoh, like YouTube, is a streaming video site that hosts videos uploaded by users. Io Group sued Veoh in 2006 after finding clips from 10 of its copyrighted adult films on the Veoh site. So far, this is a familiar story -- user-generated content site gets sued by copyright owner for naughty uploading habits of users (see, e.g., lawsuits against MySpace, iMeem, YouTube, Redlasso, Hi5, Multiply, Stage6, MP3tunes, Scribd, Usenet.com, Bolt, and Grouper). But this is the first case to get to a final ruling, and it's a total victory for Veoh.

Full post as published by Trademark Blog on August 29, 2008 (boomark / email).