What the Viacom vs. YouTube Verdict Means for Copyright Law | PBS
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/07/what-the-viacom-vs-youtube-verdict-mean...
The case centered on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This federal law, enacted in 1998, was meant to update copyright laws for the 21st century. Within the law, legislators created a way for website producers to escape copyright lawsuits, called a “Safe Harbor” provision. In order to invoke the Safe Harbor, the court ruled, YouTube must remove any material violating copyright laws once it has “specific knowledge” of particular copyrighted videos that the site is helping to distribute. Judge Stanton concluded that it was against the DMCA’s purpose to hold YouTube legally liable for every video uploaded on the website — some 20 hours of video every minute — even if they might have had a general idea that the site was being used to violate copyright laws.