The appellate court mostly agreed with the Judge's interpretation of the law, but not entirely. Where YouTube's victory stuck: agreed with the definition of 'knowledge or awareness of infringement', agreed that storage/playback/transcoding were all protected as 'at the direction of the user', and found that filtering software is not required for DMCA protection.
Several San Diego companies played a role in the conclusions. MP3tunes' own legal battle with EMI was cited positively by the appellate court twice. The appellate court quoted our Judge: 'MP3tunes is aware that some level of infringement occurs. But, there is no genuine dispute that MP3tunes did not have specific red flag knowledge with respect to any particular link.'
The Viacom v. YouTube battle is not over, but net companies battling with media companies should feel emboldened with this ruling.
--MR
