A Wednesday decision by US District Judge Louis L. Stanton granted Google the request for summary judgment - thereby siding with Google's YouTube in the $1-billion copyright infringement lawsuit that Viacom filed against the online video-sharing site in 2007.

The Google-Viacom legal scuffle has been part of the ongoing debate pertaining to the terms under which content can be distributed over the Internet, and who is responsible for policing piracy.

Throughout the legal proceedings, Viacom had accused Google executives of knowingly allowing copyrighted content to persist on YouTube - a service that Google acquired in 2006 - in an attempt to ensure the popularity of the site.

In response to Viacom's allegations that it was YouTube's responsibility to make sure that all pirated content was immediately removed from its site, YouTube argued that it was responsible only for taking down certain videos identified by copyright holders.

Finding that YouTube was within the law, Stanton said in his 30-page decision that when "YouTube was given notices, it removed the material;" a move that protected the site from liability under a provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Terming the court's decision as "a big victory for Internet users," said Jeffrey Cole, director of USC's Center for the Digital Future said: "Any other decision by the judge would have been a stifling of free expression. This is a great victory for self-expression and the growth of the Internet."