• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, August 15, 2013

Movie studios, major record labels and unions representing actors and directors are among a broad array of groups are siding with Viacom in its long-running feud with YouTube.

“Online theft has already decimated the record business and threatens to seriously impact the production of audio-visual content as well,” a coalition of unions, including the American Federation of Musicians, Directors Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild, argue in friend-of-the-court papers filed this month with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Recording Industry Association of America adds: “Unfortunately, despite the best efforts by copyright owners to increase the availability of their works through licensed services, unlawful competition from infringers nevertheless continues to inhibit optimal growth of authorized online services.”

The Motion Picture Association of America chimes in with the argument that U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton's pro-Google decision “threatens to provide a road map for culpable service providers to argue for safe harbor protection, notwithstanding their unlawful purpose and conduct.”

All of those organizations are urging the appellate court to reinstate Viacom's lawsuit against Google. The groups argue that Google should not have been eligible for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor provisions, which generally protect Web services companies from copyright infringement liability as long as they remove infringing content at the owner's request.

But the safe harbors have some exceptions. One -- which is written into the law -- applies when companies know they host specific infringing clips. Another -- created by the courts -- applies when companies are “willfully blind” to infringement on their services.

Stanton, who has presided over this case since it was filed in 2006, initially ruled four years ago that Google was protected by the safe harbors because it removed copyrighted clips when provided with their exact URLs. Stanton ruled that even if Google knew in general about infringement on the service, it didn't know which specific URLs were infringing until it received takedown notices. Viacom appealed that decision and secured a partial victory when the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to Stanton with instructions for him to determine whether Google was “willfully blind” to infringement by users.

Stanton did so, decided that Google was not willfully blind to infringement, and again ruled in Google's favor. Viacom has appealed that ruling to the 2nd Circuit.

One key point of dispute centers on a March 2006 report prepared by YouTube founder Jawed Karim, which said that clips of "well-known shows," including "Family Guy," "South Park," and "MTV Cribs," were present on the site.

Stanton said in his pro-Google ruling that Karim's memo doesn't “tie his observations to any specific clips,” and therefore doesn't prove that YouTube was willfully blind to infringement.

But the MPAA argues that Stanton's ruling “effectively nullifies willful blindness,” by equating the willfull-blindness concept with knowledge about specific pirated clips.

“If the service provider knows where infringing material is located, then the provider already has actual knowledge,” the MPAA argues. “In other words, for purposes of the knowledge element at issue here -- knowledge of the specific location of infringing material -- the information the district court required the provider to have was the same information that the provider deliberately tried to avoid.”

For its part, the RIAA argues that Google should be held liable for not using filtering technology back when the case was first filed. “There is no reason for a legitimate service provider to refuse to either license professionally produced content or implement existing and available technologies to limit infringement,” the group says in its papers.

Google is expected to file its papers in late October.