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A judge has dismissed Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement case against Google. Viacom claimed that thousands of its copyrighted videos were on YouTube, but Google hadn’t enforced the copyright on those videos. The BBC has more:

District Judge Louis Stanton said in his ruling: “Mere knowledge of prevalence of such activity in general is not enough. The provider need not monitor or seek out facts indicating such activity.”

Google and YouTube had argued that they were entitled to “safe harbour” protection under digital copyright law because they had insufficient notice of particular alleged offences. Judge Stanton agreed, saying that when “YouTube was given notices, it removed the material… it is thus protected from liability” under a provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Media conglomerate Viacom said it planned to appeal against the decision. Viacom called the ruling “fundamentally flawed” and said it reflected neither Congress’s intent behind copyright laws nor recent Supreme Court decisions.

Forbes’ Andy Greenberg put together four good business lessons from the Google/Viacom ruling–it’s worth taking a look.

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