As reported by CIO Today, a German Court in Hamburg has made a ruling that has thrown a spanner in the works for Googles Youtube, that will protect the rights of copyright owners.
GEMA sued Google Inc.'s YouTube over twelve temporarily uploaded music videos for which no licensing fees were paid. The organisation much like Australia's APRA, represents about 60,000 German writers and musicians.
Even though Youtube offers copyright owners access to software that allows them to find recordings for which they hold copyright and thus enable them to flag the content as infringing their rights, the court ruled that Youtube must then apply the software to the recording to prevent further copyright infringements. Having said that the court added"There is no obligation to control all videos already uploaded to the platform." Good news for Youtube on this count, however it won't prevent other organisations like GEMA taking further action on behalf of their own copyright owners for illegally uploaded material on Youtube.
The court also told YouTube to install a new program that will filter uploaded videos for possible copyright infringements according to key words such as musicians' names and song titles in order to capture versions of a song that only sound somewhat different, such as live recordings.
