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YouTube Ordered To Remove Videos, Filter Future Uploads By German Court
suraj.sun sends this excerpt from Deutsche Welle:
"YouTube was told by a regional court in Hamburg on Friday not to display seven out of 12 contested clips without permission from the German copyright fee collecting society Gema. Gema claimed that its members were losing money every time their music was being displayed on YouTube. A proper licensing fee between the two sides expired in 2009. The Hamburg State Court ruled YouTube would in future have to install an efficient mechanism to filter out such content uploaded by users or face a fine of up to 250,000 euros ($330,000) for each case, or up to six months imprisonment. Knowing that a foolproof filter system looks next to impossible, Gema is now hoping that Google will finally agree to a new bilateral licensing treaty whereby the collecting society would not get an annual lump sum for the contested videos, but a fixed fee each time copyright-protected videos are watched."
You don't have to go that far. Since they're only concerned about MUSIC, all Google has to do is give German viewers a different audio track. Maybe saying something like (in German and English):
"The audio for this video has been filtered by request of Gema, who may be contacted at <address (street, phone number, email)>."
Have it repeat the entire video length (in both languages). I'd say replacing the audio portion of the video with that message is an efficient filter. YouTube still serves up the video and blames Gema for the mess.
Do it for all videos seen by German viewers.
This is an interesting dilema for Google. In my opinion google should appeal the descision asking GEMA to provide a filtering algorithm that meets GEMAs demand. If GEMA cannot or will not supply the algorithm the Google should be able to ask the courts to reverse the decision based on the evidence that GEMA has asked google to do something that GEMA themselves cannot do.
Not Germany, the single most retarded court in the whole of Germany. Hamburg is to copyright suits what Texas is to patent suits. The decision will almost certainly be struck down in the next round. They virtually always are.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Because income from YouTube in Germany is likely multiple orders of magnitude bigger then fine for individual infringement. You're forgetting that country is an economic powerhouse that is one of the very few places in the world that keeps on growing at a decent rate even in current economic climate with a lot of users that are wealthy enough to be desirable targets for premium advertising.
Yet in other news, a month ago Slashdot reported that 7% of German voters in the Bundesland Saarland voted for the German Pirate Party.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Why would I stop using maps and email just because the video service has been pulled? A few zealouts will camp out and use Bing for a week and also send a notice to all 10 of their friends to change their email addresses. Everyone else will realize YouTube != the internet, won't want to change their email address on every blog, bank account and billpay service they have, and will get over it. Maybe, maybe if you're lucky people will outcry and blame Gema for blocking their ability to see what used to be available for free