On June 23, 2010 (that's today), Judge Louis J. Stanton of the United States District Court, for the Southern District of New York issued a ruling in the infamous suit between Google/YouTube and Viacom.  Judge Stanton held, in a motion for Summary Judgement by the defendants (Google/YouTube), that the "Safe-Harbor" provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act shield YouTube from liability due to users uploading potentially copyright infringing videos to its web based video sharing service.

“The provider must know of the particular case before he can control it,” Stanton said in the ruling. “The provider need not monitor or seek out facts indicating such activity.”

"Mere knowledge of prevalence of such activity in general is not enough," he wrote. "The provider need not monitor or seek out facts indicating such activity."

This will be seen as a boon for Websites/ISPs/and other Online Service Providers.  Not only does it set the stage for required knowledge before action must be taken, but also indicates the amount of safeguards and proactive steps an Online Service Provider has to take to find or seek out infringing or illegal activity.

Judge Stanton also went on to clarify that this case was not in any way related to the infamous Grokster case, which set the precedent for peer to peer file sharing, which YouTube has been deemd to not be associated with or similar to.

You can read the decision here (I uploaded it because I couldn't find it anywhere else).

Viacom intends to appeal the decision.

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