The judge rejected Viacom's comparisons between YouTube and other Internet-based, media-sharing companies, such as Grokster, that had previously been found guilty of indirect copyright infringement. The ruling also reversed the court order issued in July 2008. Viacom announced its intention to appeal the ruling. The appeal was argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in August 2011, and the decision was issued on April 5, 2012. Among other things, Viacom and the other plaintiffs focused on internal e-mails among YouTube employees who were aware of infringement, including specific instances, which the district court said could be considered knowledge that would disqualify YouTube from safe harbor protection. Judges Cabranes and Livingston reversed Judge Stanton's grant of summary judgment, holding that "a reasonable jury could find that YouTube had actual knowledge or awareness of specific infringing activity on its website" and, contrary to the Ninth Circuit's dismissal of the Veoh case ("UMG v. Shelter Partners"), that the right and ability to control infringing activity need not require knowledge of specific infringements. Thus, the case was again eligible for a jury trial. However, the court upheld one aspect of Stanton's ruling. The plaintiffs had argued that four of YouTube's software functions relating to user uploads disqualified the service from safe harbor protection, but the appeals court agreed with the lower court in that three of the functions—transcoding, playback, and related-video thumbnails— were within the scope of safe harbor. The fourth function, syndication, was remanded for further fact-finding. On April 18, 2013, Judge Stanton issued another order granting summary judgment in favor of YouTube. Following the remand from the Second Circuit court of appeals, Stanton ruled on four issues in his decision: (A) Whether YouTube had knowledge or awareness of any specific infringements (B) Whether YouTube willfully blinded itself (C) Whether YouTube had the "right and ability to control" infringing activity and (D) Whether any clips were syndicated Judge Stanton ruled in favor of YouTube on all four issues finding that YouTube had no actual knowledge of any specific instance of infringement of Viacom's works, and therefore could not have "willfully blinded itself". He also ruled that YouTube did not have the "right and ability to control" infringing activity because "there is no evidence that YouTube induced its users to submit infringing videos, provided users with detailed instructions about what content to upload or edited their content, prescreened submissions for quality, steered users to infringing videos, or otherwise interacted with infringing users to a point where it might be said to have participated in their activity."