The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on Monday voiced its opposition to the recent decision in the YouTube-Viacom copyright infringement case.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on Monday voiced its opposition to the recent decision in the YouTube-Viacom copyright infringement case.

"We believe that the district court's dangerously expansive reading of the liability immunity provisions of the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] DMCA upsets the careful balance struck within the law and is bad public policy," Cary Sherman, RIAA president, wrote in a blog post. "It will actually discourage service providers from taking steps to minimize the illegal exchange of copyrighted works on their sites."

Last week, a New York District Court ruled that the posting of Viacom-owned content by YouTube users on the Google-owned video site did not constitute copyright infringement because YouTube removed the offending content as quickly as possible after being alerted to their existence.

The ruling came three years after Viacom filed its $1 billion infringement case against YouTube.



"The present case shows that the DMCA notification regime works effectively," the court said, pointing to the fact that YouTube removed 10,000 videos at Viacom's request in one day. "General knowledge that infringement is 'ubiquitous' does not impose a duty on the service provider to monitor or search its service for infringements."

Under the DMCA, if a copyright holder finds an infringing piece of content on a site like YouTube, they can issue a takedown notice. YouTube will pull the video while it investigates. If the content infringes, it remains down. If it does not, YouTube will put it back up.

The RIAA argued, however, that sites like YouTube are not doing enough.

"As the White House recently noted in its strategic plan to combat intellectual property theft it is essential for service providers and intermediaries generally to work collaboratively with content owners to seek practical and efficient solutions to address infringement," Sherman wrote. "We need businesses to be more proactive in addressing infringement, not less."

Viacom has said it will appeal.

"We expect the Court of Appeals will better understand the balance Congress struck when it enacted the DMCA," Sherman said.

Originally posted to AppScout.