The ruling of a Northern California judge to dismiss the copyright infringement case against Veoh translates into good news for Google and Youtube. However, this does not mean Google will automatically succeed in the $1 billion copyright lawsuit with Viacom.

Veoh was dragged in court by Io Group, which operates as the adult-entertainment company Titan Media, for the fact that in June 2006 it allegedly posted 10 videos of about 40 minutes without the group’s approval. But the court ruled then that the sites which are hosting user-generated videos aren’t sole responsible for vetting the videos.

However, the big difference between Io and Viacom is that the group did not alert Veoh of the copyright infringement before going to court with it. In the other case, Viacom notified YouTube more than 100,000 times before filing suit.

"The first reaction from Io was to sue rather than to work through the system," said renowned copyright attorney Mark Litvack.

The U.S. District Court judge underlined in his ruling that Veoh "does not itself actively participate or supervise the uploading of files...nor does it preview or select the files before the upload is completed."

Veoh defend itself by bringing to the table the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which has long protected Web sites who host user-uploaded music and videos. Veoh maintained that, under the DMCA, it did not violate copyrights. 

The ruling in Veoh’s favor is also good news for other mixed sharing sites such as Muxtape, which, if implements stringent DMCA safe harbor compliance measures may escape the RIAA.