In an important decision on the issue of website operators’ copyright liability for user-generated content, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has refused to hold a site operator liable for copyright infringement based solely on its general knowledge that some of the third party content on its site may be infringing.

The Ninth Circuit’s opinion in the case of UMG Recordings v. Shelter Capital Partners concerned the potential liability of video-sharing website operator, Veoh Networks, under one of the so-called “safe harbors” of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Veoh operates a publicly accessible website that enables users to share videos with other users. The particular safe harbor Veoh invoked protects website operators and other “service providers” from liability for the copyright infringement of others who provide content on their sites when the provider “expeditiously” takes down the allegedly infringing content residing on its servers in response to a notice from a copyright owner that the content is infringing. In this case, UMG argued that Veoh’s general knowledge that infringing content resided on its servers was sufficient to deprive Veoh of the protections of the DMCA’s safe harbor for infringing content. The Ninth Circuit disagreed and affirmed the district court in upholding summary judgment for Veoh.