Viacom Files A Second Appeal in Viacom v. YouTube/Google - They'd Like a Trial and a Different Judge ~pj

Viacom can't seem to find a judge to agree with them that the DMCA Safe Harbor should be reinterpreted Viacom's way or that YouTube/Google, specifically, should lose its protection because of its conduct. Their war against Google's YouTube is into its 7th year, and Viacom still thinks that YouTube and parent Google should be held responsible for what users do on it. Specifically, it wants them to have the editorial burden of preventing copyright infringement from happening in the first place, not acting on it when notified of specific infringement by the copyright owner, and it wants it to have to pay for it all by itself.

So far, it hasn't worked out for Viacom, because that's exactly what the DMCA says shouldn't happen, so they're appealing a second YouTube victory on summary judgment, shopping for an outcome they'd like better than what they keep getting. It argues to the appeals court that the district court judge failed to properly follow the appeals court's directions after the first appeal.

So in their opening appeal brief [PDF], Viacom asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to send the case back once again to the district court for a trial, but this time with a different judge, once who might be more receptive to Viacom's interpretation of the DMCA:

Given the protracted nature of this litigation (the case is now well into its seventh year) and the evident firmness of the district court's erroneous views regarding the DMCA, this Court should exercise its discretion to remand the case to a different judge "to preserve the appearance of justice."

Not that this implies any criticism of the judge, Viacom tells the court. No. Oh no.

You know Hollywood. They want what they want and they want it now. So rather than ask Congress to change the law, they are shopping for a judge who will do it for them the easy, cheap -- and I might add, improper -- way via a strained interpretation of the law's wording based on the Grokster case. But in reality, whether they realize it or not, what they *really* want is for the Internet never to have been born, or at least to be different, more controlled from above, like television and the movies, where they can control everything their way, and users just sit back and passively buy what they sell. And since they can't have that, they want Google to have to control users on the Internet on *their* dime instead of Viacom's, which under the law has the responsibility to identify copyright infringement and send take-down notices. Not so, Viacom argues, if, as in the Grokster case, YouTube was willfully blind.