de YouTube loses court battle over music clips

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

YouTube loses court battle over music clips

YouTube could face a huge bill for royalties as it loses a court battle in Germany over music videos.

A court in Hamburg ruled that YouTube is responsible for the content that users post to the video sharing site.

It wants the video site to install filters that spot when users try to post music clips whose rights are held by royalty collection group, Gema.

The German industry group said in court that YouTube had not done enough to stop copyrighted clips being posted.

YouTube said it took no responsibility for what users did, but responded when told of copyright violations.

Gema's court case was based on seven separate music clips posted to the website. However, if YouTube is forced to pay royalties for all the clips used on the site it will face a huge bill.

Gema represents about 60,000 German song writers and musicians.

If enforced, the ruling could also slow the rate at which video is posted to the site as any music clip would have to be cleared for copyright before being used.

Currently, it is estimated that about 60 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube worldwide every minute.

YouTube owner Google has yet to comment on the ruling.

The court case began in 2010 and came after talks between YouTube and Gema about royalties broke down. In 2009, the stalemate meant that videos from German recording firms were briefly blocked on the site.

Source: BBC News

[Praetor]

there's a simple solution: remove all the videos from all the GEMA representatives. There's a ton of music videos from unknown bands that the only way people around the world would ever know them is through YouTube, so removing that hurts directly the music industry.

[Hum]

Just where are music fans supposed to see the videos, if not on Youtube ... ?

Shooting themselves in the foot. :s

[Praetor]

back in the days where music channels like MTV used to show...you know, music videos, we had some alternatives, but now that a majority of MV can be seen for free online the music industry is losing money because they can't keep on par with the technology; this isn't about the musicians and song writers losing money and copyright stuff; this is about royalties. so yeah, they're shooting in the foot.

[+ir0nw0lf Subscriber²]

What's with the German courts? Last year or two they have been making a lot of boneheaded decisions.

[ArialBlue]

Yep just remove all their music indiscriminately from the site. *middle finger* like a boss

[+Warwagon MVC]

People who bitch about people putting their stuff on youtube, drive me nuts. Doesn't it promote their content? Isn't it free advertising?

[Nexx295]

The only people ****ed are the users... We indirectly pay GEMA huge amounts of money and they don't give a poop about our opinion.

... now back to watching music videos through VPN.

[remixedcat]

if they hate the internet they don;'t have to be on it... hell I think the artists need to sue the **** outta these *******s.

[FloatingFatMan]

I know it pertains to US law, but this appears to be pretty relevant, especially the last paragraph:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Fair_use_on_the_Internet

In August 2008 US District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose, California ruled that copyright holders cannot order a deletion of an online file without determining whether that posting reflected "fair use" of the copyrighted material. The case involved Stephanie Lenz, a writer and editor from Gallitzin, Pennsylvania, who made a home video of her thirteen-month-old son dancing to Prince's song Let's Go Crazy and posted the video on YouTube. Four months later, Universal Music, the owner of the copyright to the song, ordered YouTube to remove the video enforcing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Lenz notified YouTube immediately that her video was within the scope of fair use, and demanded that it be restored. YouTube complied after six weeks, not two weeks as required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Lenz then sued Universal Music in California for her legal costs, claiming the music company had acted in bad faith by ordering removal of a video that represented fair-use of the song.^[27]

One would hope Google have pointed out the fair use aspects to the German court...