GOOGLE HAS won a landmark victory over media companies as a Manhattan federal judge threw out a Viacom $1 billion (€811 million) lawsuit accusing the internet company of allowing copyrighted videos on its YouTube service without permission.

Viacom claimed “tens of thousands of videos on YouTube, resulting in hundreds of millions of views,” had been posted based on its copyrighted works, and that the defendants knew about it but did nothing to stop illegal uploads.

However, in a 30-page ruling, US district judge Louis Stanton said it would be improper to hold Google and YouTube liable under federal copyright law merely for having a “general awareness” that videos might be posted illegally.

Viacom said it would appeal the ruling.

It called Judge Stanton’s ruling “fundamentally flawed,” saying it reflected neither Congress’s intent behind copyright laws nor recent US Supreme Court decisions.

The lawsuit went to the heart of perhaps the biggest issue facing media companies: how to win internet viewers without ceding control of their content.

It was seen as a test of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 federal law making it a crime to produce technology to circumvent anti-piracy measures, and limiting liability of online service providers for copyright infringement by users.