Federal Judge Dale S Fischer has denied a CBS and CNET.com motion to dismiss claims against them of mass online piracy. Though the claims for ‘Vicarious Liability’ against them were denied, the ‘Inducement’ claim was clearly upheld. Judge Fischer also granted Alkiviades (Alki) David et al the option to amend their Vicarious Liability claims at a later date.

“Our evidence will show that not only do they have Vicarious Liability but CNET actually embedded links from their web pages to thousands of known copyrighted songs. That puts a giant ‘I’ on inducement,” said David, founder of HD streaming service FilmOn.com, in a statement immediately following the ruling.

Jaime Marquart of Baker Marquart representing Alkiviades David et al added: “The focus of the case now shifts from the question of liability to the question of damages for our many plaintiffs.”

In another statement, Alki David said: “This is a huge win for us. This sets the precedent for other Artists and Copyright owners whose work has been illegally distributed by LimeWire, BitTorrent, Frostwire and the billions of copies of P2P software which CBS continues to induce people to download and steal.”

The coalition originally sued May 2011 for mass-scale copyright infringement in Los Angeles federal court. The lawsuit was based on the defendants’ alleged direct participation in massive copyright infringement on peer-to-peer (‘P2P’) systems, such as LimeWire, that are used to copy and distribute songs, films and other artistic works. As alleged in the lawsuit, CBS Interactive and CNET acted as the main distributor of LimeWire software and promoted this and other P2P systems to profit from wide-scale copyright infringement.

Categories: Articles, Content, Piracy, Rights