• USA Today et al., Thursday, June 24, 2010 1:14 PM

Three years after Viacom filed a $1 billion copyright infringement suit against YouTube, a federal judge threw the case out Wednesday, ruling that the Google unit could not be held responsible for the clips users post online.

As a result, "Entertainment companies may find it harder to keep movie and TV show clips from circulating for free online," suggests USA Today. Conversely, "Groups that want to promote widespread Internet use also applauded the ruling, saying that most websites don't have the resources to determine whether user-supplied videos violate the law."

"It is a setback for media companies, who for years have been trying to curb Internet companies' ability to distribute their content without compensating them," writes The Wall Street Journal. "Media executives say they expect companies like YouTube will continue to automatically filter for copyrighted content, however, as the companies jockey for licensing agreements with media producers."

"Since [the suit's original] filing ... tensions [between media companies and Google] have eased substantially, as YouTube has set up an automated system to detect and block infringing videos and has signed revenue-sharing agreements with more than a thousand media companies," writes The New York Times. "But media companies remain concerned that they will continue to lose control over their content as more of it becomes digital, making it easier to copy."

Viacom, which plans to appeal the ruling, said it is "fundamentally flawed and contrary to the language of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the intent of Congress and the views of the Supreme Court."

U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton said, however, that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act includes a "safe harbor" provision, which was designed to relieve Web sites from the burden of checking user-generated material before it's posted.

"The big irony of the case is that Viacom was arguably not damaged by its shows' unauthorized exposures on YouTube but benefited from them," notes Search Engine Land. "There's also evidence that Viacom executives knew what was going on and were pleased about it."

As CNet notes, "Legal scholars predicted the outcome of this landmark suit would determine who profited the most from content: the people who pay for its creation, or the people who help disseminate it over the Web." Regarding that question, however, the jury's still out.

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