A Manhattan district judge gave Google some partial victories that week in its copyright-infringement battle with Viacom by YouTube. Last year, Viacom sued Google and its YouTube site for $1 billion for what it called unauthorized use of video clips from Viacom properties.

In Wednesday’s decision, Judge Louis L. Stanton granted a protective order to Google so it doesn’t have to turn by its search source cipher as Viacom requested. Viacom argued it wanted to show that Google did not have copyright filters, but Google countered — successfully, at that round — that the cipher is a trade secret. The search cipher is used both on YouTube.com and on Google’s main search engine.

Needs ‘Plausible’ Showing

In his decision, the judge said Google and YouTube “should not be made to place that vital asset in hazard merely to allay speculation.” He added that a “plausible” showing that Google/YouTube’s denials were false and that the search operate “can and

has been used to discriminate infringing content” should be mandatory before “so valuable and vulnerable an asset is compelled.”

The judge said there was no evidence that the search engine can separate clips that violate someone else’s copyright, such as Viacom’s, and those that do not. He did leave open that there may be other ways to filter infringing clips.

Stanton plus turned down Viacom’s inquiry for Google to deliver its electronic-index documents for its advertising and video-content databases, or for the source cipher of YouTube’s video-identification tool. The video ID program enables holders of copyright material to supply YouTube with samples, so infringements can be tracked down on the site.

One aspect of Viacom’s case has been that YouTube does not merely share video subject matter that users upload, but that the site copies the uploaded composition onto its servers and makes that composition available via its search…

Orginal post by Top Tech News