Yesterday, a judge granted YouTube’s Motion for Summary Judgment in the Viacom v. YouTube litigation. This is a major victory for all user generated content (UGC) companies because it strongly affirms the DMCA safe harbor. Congrats to David Drummond and the legal team at Google. Given that Google has been defending Internet freedom on a number of fronts it must feel good for them to score this victory. Great coverage can be found over at the EFF.
With this decision it is even more important than ever before that any web company that has UGC – and that includes just having forums! – make sure to register with the Copyright office ($105). In addition to registering you also need to include appropriate DMCA language in the terms of service with a reference to the designated agent registered with the Copyright office. I am often surprised to find that startups that have extensive UGC components are not familiar with this.
