Viacom v Google

Viacom sued Google, for 1 billion in damages for posting infringing material content owned by Viacom without their permission.Google contented that they were legally protected under the DMCA. (Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998). Under the DMCA, safe harbor provision, the hosting website, will not be held liable, for infringement caused by users. Viacom, however, contended that the safe harbour provision does not apply. According to me, a balance is required for the interest of the justice, to ascertain whether the steps taken by Google, after it received the notice are sufficient to enable them to receive, protection under DMCA. I would propose that, web hosting website should take a reasonable level of steps within their organisation to make sure that rights of others are not infringed. And if a notice is given under DMCA, then it is imperative that hosting website, should remove the content from the website. However the flip side of this would be, that if the threshold is kept low for the hosting website, it would be detrimental to the interest of the artists and if the threshold is high, then it might affect the fourth amendment rights of the users.