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YouTube Can Be Liable For Copyright Infringing Videos, Court Rules (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube is known to be a breeding ground for creators. At the same time, however, it's also regularly used to share copyrighted material without permission. While copyright holders can issue takedown notices to remove infringing content, a preliminary ruling by the Commercial Court in Vienna has decided this is not sufficient. The ruling follows a complaint from local television channel Puls 4. After a thorough review of YouTube's functionalities, the Court concluded that YouTube has an obligation to prevent third parties from uploading infringing content. In its defense, YouTube argued that it's a neutral hosting provider under the provisions of the E-Commerce Act. As such, it should be shielded from direct liability for the actions of users. However, the Commercial Court disagreed, noting that YouTube takes several motivated actions to organize and optimize how videos are displayed. By doing so, it becomes more than a neutral hosting provider.

6 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I agree with the ruling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That is not what the court said. It said that since Youtube's recommendations (and ads) functionality tries to optimize cash flow (both short- and long-term), it's not a neutral provider. Being a neutral provider has nothing to do with removing videos.

  2. Without a fuck-ton of false positives..... by mark-t · · Score: 2, Insightful

    .... did the court offer any suggestions as to how, technically speaking, Youtube was supposed to achieve this?

    The very *best* case scenario here if Austria gets what they are asking for is that this is going to result in entirely legal videos which might contain parody, satire, or commentary on copyrighted works being blocked from being viewed in Austria, as well as any other entirely original works that might happen to have some superficial similarity to a copyrighted work. It only goes downhill from there.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    1. Re:Without a fuck-ton of false positives..... by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They can either stop doing it wrong, or start doing it right. Either they stop censoring videos altogether, or they start requiring verification of identity before permitting video uploads. Pretending they can't solve this problem is at best a failure of imagination. They can't solve it without substantially altering the site, but so what? They don't have a right to run it any way they want. There are these things called laws...

      YouTube wants to be able to pick winners but doesn't want to keep the floors clean. They need to choose one or the other.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Without a fuck-ton of false positives..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They can either stop doing it wrong, or start doing it right.

      While I mostly agree with you, it's not that clear cut, and there are other options.

      YouTube believes they are "a neutral hosting provider under the provisions of the E-Commerce Act". The court disagreed. So there is a law, and it's obviously unclear where the demarcation is between neutral hosting provider and, um, "more than a neutral hosting provider" (so clear, lol).

      Either they stop censoring videos altogether, or they start requiring verification of identity before permitting video uploads.

      AFAICT, that's not really the issue. They have identity (of sorts) before video's are uploaded (IMO, the plaintiff should sue that person, the court should subpoena youtube for the identifying info (ip, user, email, activity, etc), and someone should track them down (police/etc) so that the actively infringing party is held responsible, but I digress...). The censoring isn't the issue either - it's the value add stuff ("organize and optimize how videos are displayed").

      The latter bit means they *may* be able to strip that stuff from the version of youtube for that country. If they remove all of their automatic categorization and other stuff, and rely just on what the user presents, then they'd be neutral again... but I suspect it'd also be more difficult for the plaintiff to find the infringing content.

      They can also do what they're doing now - argue it in court. No need to do anything more than that now since it's still an interpretation of the law type of thing.

      Lastly, though I'm not sure the extent of laws involved in this case, there may be some date based stuff to consider. Normally, laws are not applied retroactively. If/when marijuana is legalized, those that are currently incarcerated because of it are not automatically absolved; if something is made illegal, those doing it before the law is in effect are not retroactively punished. So, if what YT was doing at some point in the past was ok, they may be able to restrict access to everything after that date, and make a clean cut, and start conforming to the new ruling from this point forward (maybe provide an easy way for users to re-enable their content).

      Anyway... lots of options here, and defining what is "right", especially on a global scale, is nearly impossible.

  3. Hmmm by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Seems like a little Geo-Blocking by YoueTube is in order. Then the good citizens of Austria can take this matter up with their legal system.

    Truth is, if they are themselves liable for any copyrighted content, it would seem like every video uploaded would have to be vetted by every country in the world.

    The takedown notices used now are not perfect, but they allow YouTube to exist. And is a county decides that is not acceptable, then that country needs to be denied access.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  4. There's only one way you could comply with this: by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In order to comply with this, if (theoretically) it was enforced world-wide upon YouTube, would be for YouTube to have every video uploaded sit in a private space that only YouTube has access to, and have a human employee of YouTube view the video looking for copyright violations. In essense it would be the death of YouTube.

    But wait, there's more: That would set a legal precedent for any media hosting on the entire Internet; everyone, from the largest to the smallest company, would have to do the same vetting of uploaded media in order to protect themselves from liability. Something like Facebook, for instance, would have to have every static photograph uploaded scrutinized, too, to ensure that there's nothing in the background that's IP belonging to anyone who would sue over it.

    Theoretically, a ruling like this, if it was upheld worldwide, would more or less destroy the Internet as we know it. The only entities it would serve would be large media companies; the Internet would become, even more so than it is already, just a tool for business and revenue generation, not much of anything in the interests of private individuals. Many companies providing hosting of uploaded media would simply cease to exist or stop offering the ability to upload anything for fear of being legally liable for copyright violation.

    The Internet is becoming a slow-motion trainwreck. Between government censorship in so many countries, cybercrime, abuses by people and organizations pushing 'fake news', and ISPs wanting to go back to the 'walled garden' business model, the Internet is slowly but surely becoming unusable.