YouTube loses court battle over music clips

[sgift]

As usual: This is a decision by a LG (Landgericht), it will surely go to the next higher court: OLG (Oberlandesgericht). In this special case it is a decision by the "LG Hamburg", famously known in Germany for its useless decisions in 'internet cases' that will be reverted by the next higher court. Nothing to see here, people. Move on. :)

[citricsquid]

I thought that they already did this automatically? I uploaded a video I took from my old apartment, because I lived behind a club* you could hear music and Youtube automatically detected it on upload. Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOANhQ9nQYk and the message I see via my account:

""Hi Friend", musical composition administered by: EMI Music Publishing. Your video is still available worldwide. In some cases, ads may appear next to your video. Please note that the video's status can change, if the policies chosen by the content owners change. Learn more about copyright on YouTube.".

I have also uploaded videos from TV shows that have been detected automatically as content owned someone else. This clip from a UK TV show "countdown": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuHREvK74-4

""Countdown-Countdown", audio-visual content administered by: Channel 4" Your video is blocked in these locations: Guernsey, Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, United Kingdom. Please note that the video's status can change, if the policies chosen by the content owners change. Learn more about copyright on YouTube."

Doesn't this satisfy the courts that Youtube is going to great lengths to prevent this?

* Never live behind a club, it's ridiculous.

[smackfu]

Interesting. Is that why BBC and Channel 4 stuff seems to live on YouTube much longer than you would think? Because it's blocked in the UK?

[w1kke]

I am from Germany and I am really embarassed by the stupidity in my country. Youtube should just disable its service for Germany. Grooveshark did the same. Everyone who is serious about the internet could enable the service anyway.

[robertgaal]

Could you give a little more insights as to why this is happening specifically in your country?

[Tichy]

There is more than music videos on YouTube.

I hope this will give a boost to free music.

[davidw]

I'm sort of glad to see it's not just Italy that produces inane rulings regarding Youtube and posted content.

[chandega]

[inflammatory comment] So following that logic car manufacturers are responsible for all the car accidents in history; its their users, they should check that the person is able and fit to use their service (car). It just makes me mad. It's just a bad precedent.

[jlujan]

This is the same as saying gun manufactures have liability in any murder committed with their product which many argue, they have not done enough to prevent the wrong people from getting firearms. But it is the wrong analogy. In sites like youtube, it is more like a property owner that rents a building and is aware of his tenants performing illegal activity on a regular basis. Which depending on the crimes and the amount of knowledge could make the property owner liable or even an accessory. But all of this leads to the same arguments and worthless discussion about semantics. The correct discussion is what value we place on media as a society. The easiest way to solve this is to stop supporting artists on major labels. Advances in technology have lowered the barrier to entry in recorded music to a widely attainable level. Artists trade the rights to their music to labels for the label's marketing and distribution. Now days, interesting things go viral with little to no marketing effort and there is no argument that the labels are decades behind in their distribution channels. Even if you wan to avoid iTunes or other services, It is relatively easy for a moderately tech savvy individual to push a digital album to S3 or the likes, link to it from a static site and serve millions of downloads. Could even get fancy and deploy a web store template from godaddy for taking payments. Yeah, it might take some learning but so does negotiating a 100 page recording contract... ask Aerosmith.

We can't keep bashing labels for defending/protecting their aging distribution channels. You can't blame a dog for acting like a dog. We can create truly disruptive new distribution channels with better terms for artists and go head to head with the labels.

[rhplus]

I'm probably in a very small minority here, but given that Google is making money by placing ads next to most YouTube content, then yes, perhaps they are responsible for determining who actually owns the content first.

[Tichy]

I'd argue that car manufacturers are indeed part responsible for car accidents.

[RyanMcGreal]

If Google wanted to make a big stink out of this, they could decide not to offer YouTube in Germany at all, citing the country's royalty laws as a reason it cannot operate viably there.

[ars]

It wouldn't be enough to just shut down youtube. They would have to shut down all of their business in Germany.

Otherwise the local offices would be made liable for the main youtube.com.

[mattmanser]

A stink? Shut down your business in the 4th biggest international market? Lose millions in revenue?

Think those German clone crazy brothers wouldn't release DieTube.de the next day? Lose your dominant market share overnight.

Good luck on still being the CEO the next day!

[web_chops]

One of the big appeals of youtube is that a submitted video is available everywhere (well majority of the countries). Google would rather pay hefty fines than lose that.

[qznc]

Could Youtube just silence the videos?

Sometimes I just want to see some cool flying robots and the full video is disabled, because the creator decided to include some background music.

[nextparadigms]

That would certainly be a nice form of protest. They could even show a tiny message on top of each video explaining why all videos are silent in Germany. I really think Google should protest this rather than agree to make a deal with GEMA (if the decision remains final, at least).

[Jun8]

Wow, this precedent covers much more than YouTube. If German courts will hold any such service accountable for what the users post, pretty much all widely used services are susceptible to suing.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Germany doesn't understand the internet from what I've seen. They're the country that legally requires you to post your full name, address and telephone number on your website. (search for "Impressum")

[hemancuso]

I remain surprised by how much music piracy seems to take place on YouTube. Nearly any popular song out there has a YouTube video with essentially blank/random video content and a nicely encoded layer 3 with the music. Combined with all the tools/plugins out there to "download YouTube videos" it seems like quite an easy spot to steal mp3s of most popular songs.

[kayoone]

Another great example how the german court again and again tries to kill internet innovation with ridiculous stuff like this.

Really hope this isnt the last word in the debate!

[w1kke]

The next elections in Germany might bring a change as the German Priate Party is gaining more and more votes in the polls.

This could bring the change we all hope for.

[schrijver]

So actually, due to disagreements with GEMA, many Youtube videos are already blocked in Germany, even if uploaded by the video clips copyright holders. I was in Stuttgart and couldn’t open a video by SBTRKT that was posted by their own label http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdUINbi4wSY

[conradfr]

As Germany seems to be more strict than anywhere else, does someone know if these actions there had effect on the industry revenues ?

[av500]

All negative effects on media industry revenues are always due to piracy!

[tbatterii]

I guess music in Germany is going to suck for the foreseeable future.

No matter, as long as I can still discover Scandinavian metal regularly, this court ruling won't affect me as I am not a fan of the Scorpions or David Hasselhoff.

Rammstein is ok though

http://youtu.be/Ef3zxiOaYgI

:)