A Southern District judge largely accepted the arguments of Vimeo, a video-sharing website, and its lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan on Wednesday in Vimeo's copyright spat with a group of EMI Music record labels.
The litigation, which bears a resemblance to Viacom's much-larger copyright showdown with YouTube, concerns close to 200 copyrighted recordings that Vimeo users included in video uploads to the site. The record labels sued in 2009, claiming that Barry Diller-backed Vimeo should be held liable for widespread infringement. But Judge Ronnie Abrams (See profile) said that safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act shield Vimeo from the record labels' copyright claims for most of the videos in question.
