(Corrects the day of the decision in first paragraph to
Wednesday from Thursday)
By Nate Raymond
NEW YORK, May 15 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday
denied class-action status to copyright owners suing Google Inc
over the use of material posted on YouTube without
their permission.
U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in Manhattan denied a
motion to certify a class of copyright owners in a long-running
lawsuit over videos and music posted to popular website. The
case ran in parallel with a $1 billion lawsuit by Viacom Inc
filed in 2007.
One part of the proposed class would have included any
copyright owner whose allegedly infringed videos were blocked by
YouTube after it received a so-called takedown notice and
blocked it.
Another part of the proposed class covered music publishers
whose compositions were allowed to be used on YouTube without
proper permission.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Richard
Chang)
