MUMBAI: A Manhattan federal judge Louis Stanton quashed Viacom Inc‘s $1 billion law suit that accused Google Inc of posting copyrighted videos on its YouTube service without permission.
 
In his remarks, Stanton said that the world‘s most popular online video service had not violated legal provisions that protect internet service providers from recourse since it had removed the items after being alerted.

Viacom had claimed that 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 but did nothing to stop the illegal uploads. 
 
Google and YouTube, in particular, had argued that they were entitled to ‘safe harbor‘ protection under the federal copyright law because they had insufficient notice of the particular alleged infringements.

In a 30-page ruling, the Judge said the defendants were entitled to safe harbor protection ‘against all of plaintiffs‘ claims for direct and secondary copyright infringement.

Stanton later directed the parties to submit a report by 14 July to address any remaining issues in the case.