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."

Comments

Youtube can't even build a decent Frontpage...

[dryriver]

Youtube is a site in severe decline. Every time I go to Youtube.com, the Frontpage - which has a horrible layout - features a seemingly random selection of videos. Some are genuinely popular with a few 100K views (like SexyPhil, FPS Russia, MyFavoriteMartian and a few other regulars). Quite a few, on the other hand, are random new videos that - always - have been watched by exactly 302 Viewers. For mysterious reasons, the view counter on these videos stays stuck at 302 Views until the video gets a few 100K views. And these videos seem to hang around the frontpage for 1 - 2 days, with no explanation whatsoever as to why they are frontpage material. Does the Youtube staff pick them? Are they selected by an algorithm of some sort? Nobody knows, nobody tells. Oh, then there is the viewer statistics that Youtube offers for your videos. Works sometimes. Refuses to work at all at others.-------- The whole of Youtube sometimes seems to be a patchwork of functions that barely hang together to make a working videosharing site. ---------- And then there is the old Youtube-Future Conspiracy Theory: That Google is growing Youtube's viewer count patiently, until so many video afficionados visit the free site daily, that it becomes feasible to start putting non-free Pay-Per-View content like Hollywood films and popular TV Shows on it. Youtube would partially transform into a kind of online "Blockbuster Video Store" or plain "Online Video Rental Service", where you pay to view premium content like recent Hollywood Blockbusters. The community aspect of Youtube - teens going online to -OMG- watch the latest Justin Bieber/Rihanna/Katy Perry - would deliver a steady stream of willing-to-pay customers to Youtube's premium service. Youtube may currently be a visually cluttered semi-mess, without a good business model, or good management. But that may change one day, and Youtube may either require payment to watch certain things, or stop interrupting free videos with video advertising.