International Law

Important DMCA copyright decision

Wired's Threat Level Blog reports on an important copyright decision out of the US:

The case was brought by Universal Music Group, which claimed that San Diego-based Veoh -- financially backed by Time Warner and Michael Eisner ? engaged in wanton copyright infringement because it allowed users to upload and store the music concern's copyrighted videos. U.S. District Judge Howard Matz agreed with Veoh that its business model complied with the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act's so-called safe harbor provisions.

The case is similar to other suits targeting YouTube, MySpace, MP3Tunes and others. And it marks just the second time that a federal judge has ruled the DMCA protects video-sharing sites ? even user-generated sites like Veoh that transform user-uploaded content into flash-formatted videos that can later be accessed by users.

...

Both rulings are not binding on other judges, however. And neither the U.S. appellate courts nor the U.S. Supreme Court has directly addressed the issue.

Check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation's take by Fred von Lohmann on the topic.

Read more here.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on January 07, 2009 (boomark / email).