Table of Contents:

•UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Veoh Networks, Inc.

UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Veoh Networks, Inc., USCA Ninth Circuit, December 20, 2011

•In a heavily litigated and much watched case, the Ninth Circuit upholds DMCA safe harbor protection from copyright infringement liability for video-sharing site and affirms dismissal of claims of secondary liability for copyright infringement against investors in the site.

Plaintiffs, record labels and music publishing companies, sued defendants, Veoh Networks, operator of a web site that allows users to share videos, and its investors, for infringement of music copyrights plaintiffs owned in some of the videos users had shared. The district court granted summary judgment to Veoh, holding that it was protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) "safe harbor" limiting service providers' liability for "infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider." The district court also granted defendant investors' motion to dismiss the claims for secondary liability against them. Plaintiff UMG appealed both the summary judgment and the dismissal, and the Ninth Circuit panel affirmed.

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