Advanced Copyright Issues on the Internet - Fenwick & West LLP

servers to be accessed by other means. 1967summary judgment, concluding:The court therefore denied the plaintiffs’ motion forThe four software functions that UMG challenges fall within the scope of §512(c), because all of them are narrowly directed toward providing access tomaterial stored at the direction of users. Both the conversion of uploaded filesinto Flash format and the “chunking” of uploaded files are undertaken to make iteasier for users to view and download movies, and affect only the form and notthe content of the movies; “streaming” and downloading merely are twotechnically different means of accessing uploaded videos. 1968Following this ruling, Veoh moved for summary judgment that it had satisfied theremaining requirements of Section 512(c) and was therefore not liable for monetary or injunctiverelief. The court granted Veoh’s motion for summary judgment. 1969 Because the basic facts ofthe case were not disputed, the court’s opinion addressed the significant question of the extent towhich the DMCA obligates Internet-based services like Veoh, which rely on content contributedby users, to police their systems to prevent copyright infringement.The court began its analysis with a review of certain key facts about the way the Veohsystem operated, and these facts seemed to provide important context for the court’s conclusionsconcerning whether Veoh should have DMCA immunity. Each time users began to upload avideo to the veoh.com web site they were shown a message stating, “Do not upload videos thatinfringe copyright, are pornographic, obscene, violent, or any other videos that violate Veoh’sTerms of Use.” 1970 Veoh’s employees did not review user-submitted content before it becameavailable to other users, although Veoh’s system did allow it to disable access to inappropriatevideos. Veoh used a number of technologies to automatically prevent copyright infringement onits system. Beginning in 2006, when Veoh disabled access to a video that infringed a copyright,it used hash filtering software to thereafter automatically disable access to any identical videoand block any subsequently submitted duplicates. In addition, in 2007, Veoh began using theAudible Magic commercial software to filter out potentially infringing video files from beinguploaded in the first instance by taking an audio fingerprint from the video files and comparing itto a database of copyright content that was protected by copyright holders like UMG.Approximately nine months later, Veoh applied the Audible Magic filter to its backlog of videos,resulting in the removal of more than 60,000 videos. Although the vast majority of allegedlyinfringing files had been removed in response to notices from the RIAA (acting as UMGRecording’s agent) and the Audible Magic software, several hundred other allegedly infringingfiles that the Audible Magic filter had failed to identify as infringing remained on the system. 19711967 Id. at 1088-89.1968 Id. at 1092.1969 UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Veoh Networks Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86932 (Sept. 11, 2009).1970 Id. at *6.1971 Id. at *6-12.- 425 -