YouTube, Viacom End Lengthy Lawsuit; YouTube Victorious

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When founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim first created YouTube they couldn’t have possibly known what an online phenomenon it would turn out to be. Officially launched in November of ’05, YouTube quickly grew and in July 0f ’06 was already netting a cool 65,000 video uploads a day and over 100 million video views. Not too long after YouTube was deemed to be the next big thing, Google quickly swooped in and purchased the company for $1.65 billion.

Today, pretty much everyone who has accessed the Internet has been to YouTube as the site’s content spans across virtually every genre from comedy and music to documentaries and educational bits. Of course, any site as big as YouTube that is largely community based is sure to run into problems and indeed they have.

Back in July of 2008, we first told you about a billion dollar lawsuit between Viacom and YouTube. The fiasco revolved around Viacom owned, copyrighted material that users would upload to YouTube which Viacom stated was completely illegal. Of course, YouTube fought back by saying it wasn’t there fault (as all content is user uploaded) and that when any copyrighted material is brought to their attention they quickly remove it.

Well, years after the two companies first entered the court room a judge has finally made the final ruling. The verdict? YouTube is innocent and will not be forced to pay any money to Viacom for the copyrighted material.

According to the judge, YouTube is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which does not hold them responsible for the user uploaded content. Furthermore, the judge ruled that the current system YouTube has in place regarding DMCA take down requests (which saw the take down of 100,000+ Viacom materials back in 2007) is more than adequate and they will not be penalized for it.

What do you guys think? Do you agree with the judge? Is YouTube really innocent? Let us know in the comments below.