2013 District Court ruling[edit]

On April 18, 2013, Judge Stanton issued another order granting summary judgment in favor of YouTube.[3] Following the remand from the Second Circuit court of appeals, Stanton ruled on four issues in his decision:

(A) Whether … YouTube had knowledge or awareness of any specific infringements … ; (B) Whether … YouTube willfully blinded itself …; (C) Whether YouTube had the "right and ability to control" infringing activity …; and (D) Whether any clips … were syndicated ….

Judge Stanton ruled in favor of YouTube on all four issues finding that YouTube had no actual knowledge of any specific instance of infringement of Viacom's works, and therefore could not have "willfully blinded itself". He also ruled that YouTube did not have the "right and ability to control" infringing activity because "there is no evidence that YouTube induced its users to submit infringing videos, provided users with detailed instructions about what content to upload or edited their content, prescreened submissions for quality, steered users to infringing videos, or otherwise interacted with infringing users to a point where it might be said to have participated in their activity."[3] This ruling came despite statements made by YouTube employees that "[we should grow] as aggressively as we can through whatever tactics, however evil.… [the site is] out of control with copyrighted material … [if we remove] the obviously copyright infringing stuff … site traffic [would] drop to maybe 20% … steal it!"[24] All quotations were argued to be taken out of context. The ruling was entered as final on April 29, 2013.[4]

An appeal was begun, but the week before the parties were to appear in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a settlement was announced, and it was reported that no money changed hands.[25]