Stanford Center for Internet and Society

In the District of Minnesota, several recording companies including Capitol, Sony BMG, and Warner Bros. sued defendant Jammie Thomas for copyright infringement. The suit alleged that the defendant had illegally downloaded and distributed the plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings using peer-to-peer file-sharing software. The case went to trial, and the jury found for the plaintiffs, awarding $222,000 in damages. Following a careful review of the relevant statutes, legislative history, and case law, however, the court decided that a jury instruction that too broadly defined the concept of distribution had been erroneous and required a new trial. At the end of its opinion, the court called on Congress to standardize the range of peer-to-peer liability and damages.

Io Group, Inc. (“Io”) sued Veoh Networks, Inc. (“Veoh”) in federal district court for direct, contributory, and/or vicarious copyright infringement performed in the website veoh.com, which enables the sharing of user-provided content. Veoh responded that it qualifies for safe harbor under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), which provides protection from liability for: “(1) transitory digital network communications; (2) system caching; (3) information residing on systems or networks at the direction of users; and (4) information location tools.” The United States District Court for the Northern District of California agreed with defendant Veoh and dismissed the case.

Io Group, Inc. v. Veoh Networks, Inc.