back to article Hamburg court: Google must police YouTube content

German composers and music publishers' society GEMA has notched a copyright victory in its long-running dispute with Google. A Hamburg court ruled that The Chocolate Factory is responsible for what it publishes, and may need to install filters on uploaded video material. What's it all about? GEMA summarised its case (in …

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  1. JimmyPage Silver badge

    I wonder ...

    what the loss to Google would be, of not supplying YouTube to Germany ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I wonder ...

      @JimmyPage: "I wonder ... what the loss to Google would be, of not supplying YouTube to Germany ?"

      Or, indeed, the loss to anyone if Google didn't supply YouTube anywhere?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I wonder ...

        Or, indeed, the loss to anyone if no one supplied Tube anywhere?

        wow, that would be like... the end of the world, at least. Like... loosing net access for AT LEAST, like, 10 sec, like. And think of all those billions of people, who have made youtube their sole source of revenue, and now, like, they'd be truly f...ed, like, starving an shit.

        oh, what would we do without youtube?!

    2. qwarty

      Re: I wonder ...

      they can still supply silent movies to Germany.

    3. JohnG

      Re: I wonder ...

      "I wonder what the loss to Google would be, of not supplying YouTube to Germany ?"

      Google do provide You Tube in Germany but for many videos clips, users will get this message instead of the chosen clip:

      "Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany, because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights.

      Sorry about that."

      This applies to music from artists from around the world, not just German artists.

  2. aBloke FromEarth
    FAIL

    The users lose out

    So users in Germany still won't be able to see music videos AND their uploads will have to be vetted first (= false positives).

    I wonder if GEMA realise that they're helping to kill the music industry?

    1. pcsupport

      Re: The users lose out

      I wonder if JOE PUBLIC and GOOGLE realise that they're helping to kill the music industry?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Pirate

        Re: The users lose out

        Didn't home taping already kill the music industry?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          I thought *I* killed the music industry

          Making mixed cassettes off the radio back in the day.

        2. JimmyPage Silver badge
          Stop

          no, but

          video killed the radio star.

          I think.

        3. Cunningly Linguistic
          Thumb Up

          Re: The users lose out

          The music industry should be killed.

          It's the artists who need to live on, not the accounts who populate the "industry".

        4. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The users lose out

          >Didn't home taping already kill the music industry?

          It totally did in my home....and if it wasn't for the industry's courageous strategy throughout the 1990s, to promote only artists and music that no normal person would ever want to tape, things would probably be much worse.

        5. wowfood

          Re: The users lose out

          home recording isn't killing music. Musics dying of natural causes.

      2. Cyberspice
        FAIL

        Re: The users lose out

        No shit music and protectionism is what's helping to kill the music industry. Why should a club have to pay a licence fee to play music which was created by a band that is friends of that clubs owners and is not signed to a record company? Because they do and the musicians see nothing of it. Remember the Pratchett book with the guild of musicians. That's the modern music industry that is!

    2. (AMPC) Anonymous and mostly paranoid coward
      Gimp

      Re: The users lose out

      And if GEMA kills the music industry, does that mean all surviving artists will be forced to use Youtube for distribution?

      Perish the thought.....

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As it should be

    More perps to do the walk.

  4. graeme leggett Silver badge

    Soundhound

    If this well known app can identify a song sung by my other half then surely it, or something similar, could vet uploads to see if the music was already known and covered by the German agreement.

    Or am I taking an overly simplistic approach to the matter?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    German Rulings vs US Law

    I wonder how these rulings interact with the US DMCA and Safe Harbor laws?

    They seem very counter to each other, where safely abiding the laws in one country put you at serious legal risk in the other.....

    1. Rob 5

      Re: German Rulings vs US Law

      It's not just the US. The e-Commerce Directive introduced limitation of liability provisions into EU law that are somewhat similar to those of the DMCA.

      I haven't read the judgement, but I suspect that this is a result of Germany having some sort of compulsory licensing arrangement*, possibly descended from law around levies on blank media.

      If so, I wouldn't expect to see a similar ruling from the English courts any time soon.

      * Ironic, that compulsory licensing should be the vehicle for google losing, given that a lot of the freetards keep clamouring for it.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    From the perspective of a professional musician

    What many here don't seem to understand is that what YouTube does, basically, is theft.

    Some argue that they can hear my songs on the radio "for free." Wrong. The radio station pays royalties to me, more or less directly. They get their money from advertising, which the listeners pay for by buying the products advertised. So, listening to my stuff on the radio is *not* free for the listener in general.

    YouTube however has a much wider audience than any radio station I could think of, and pays me shit while making a shitload of money from advertising.

    Guess what? I feel ripped off by them.

    1. Dave 150

      Re: From the perspective of a professional musician

      Once I have recorded it off the radio it is free to listen to, and no one is threatening to take my radio & tape recorder away from me after 3 warnings!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        radio 'personality' == anti-piracy device

        How do you manage to record off the radio ? I thought radio 'personalities' were hired specifically to talk over either the beginning or end of every popular track to prevent this from happening.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: From the perspective of a professional musician

      If the record companies get paid by the radio stations, why is Payola still a problem even though its been illegal for more than half a century?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: From the perspective of a professional musician

      Never heard of ye

    4. peter 45

      Re: From the perspective of a professional musician

      Guess what. Youtube do pay Royalties. (Remember few years back when PRS wanted more money for their licence so Google decided not to play their videos).

      If you think that you are not getting paid, I'd have a word with the PRS to see where the money has gone.

      Good luck.

    5. MacGyver
      Facepalm

      Re: From the perspective of a average worker

      Boo hoo, don't record your music to a physical form of media and only play it live, problem solved.

      What you are bitching about is your inability to work for a couple of days a year (recording a CD), but get paid all year, or get paid every year from now until you're dead. I wake up every day, and go to work, so do most people in the world, don't bitch because the little niche career technology provided you for a bit of time (1930's-2012) has puttered out, either get a real job, or just play live, or be happy with what you can get, but don't think for one second that I am going to lose sleep because Lars Ulric can't afford to buy this year's Hummer4.

      It's funny because you think Youtube is robbing you, but I bet Gotye doesn't think that, do they. They released that album forever ago, but a cover of it on Youtube is what got most people interested in it, and they just performed it on SNL. Without the radio or Youtube, your wonderful music would only be enjoyed by you, your dog, and your mom.

      You want to be paid for someone advertising you, you've got that the wrong way round.

      Tomorrow I'm going into work and recording me fixing things, then I'll hand it to my boss, and tell him where to send my weekly checks, we'll see how that goes.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Pirates are in denial for sure

    Jail time and $10K per copy fines should be manadatory worldwide IMO.

    1. MacGyver
      Facepalm

      Re: The lawyers are in denial for sure

      So you've never recorded a song from the radio, or recorded a TV show to a VCR, or used a library to "check-out" a book, or borrowed or lent a record/CD/DVD to or from anyone? So you would simply stick various members of your family in jail?

      Judging by your post, you are either a programmed shill, or a lawyer. You do realize that expecting to be paid forever for something done once is a new concept, mostly because it is simply not sustainable, not everyone can be paid forever for work they do one time.

      I would much rather see my tax money going to stop real crime, rape, murder, B&E, armed-robbery, than fake crime (making a copy of information I don't feel like sharing). "Hurry quick, someone copied my song I made all by myself using all the knowledge I gained while listening to other music over my lifetime." Our society exists because of how we shared knowledge, then when we finally have the ability for everyone to have access to all of it, lawyers come along and demand their cut, I mean their client's cut, that they get a piece of.

    2. Intractable Potsherd
      Devil

      "Jail time and $10K per copy fines should be manadatory worldwide IMO."

      Well, it is good to see that someone has an appropriate level of perspective here!

      (That's sarcasm, just in case there are some faulty detectors around)

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This Landesgericht Hamburg that made this judgement has a history of making these sorts fo judgements, and this is why GEMEA sued Google there. Its verdicts in these sorts of cases are almost invariable overturned on appeal (and there's a few more levels of courts this case can be appealed through).

  9. Wintermute
    FAIL

    Germany Calling

    As an expat, an avid YouTube user, and a resident of Germany, I can tell you that GEMA has already gone way too far. Sure, according to German law they are winning, but they are losing the hearts and minds of the people here.

    It already seems that half of YouTube is blocked in Germany. I imagine that implementing this most recent victory will block even more.

    I don't listen to commercial music on YouTube. I'm usually interested in random videos that involve people talking, but when there is even a short snippet of a song from one of GEMA's artists, the entire video is blocked.

    I have bookmarked some of these banned videos and played them when visiting other more enlightened countries. Often, I cannot discern anything musical playing in the videos at all. This makes me think that Google's algorithms are already generating false positives matching GEMA content, blocking more of YouTube than is absolutely necessary.

    I did not even know that GEMA existed until I tried to access YouTube in Germany, but I hate them with a passion now for how they have managed to mutilate YouTube into frustrating uselessness. If punishing German residents is their business model, then I hope that GEMA fails sooner rather than later.

    If I were a German citizen, I would vote for the Pirate Party in any upcoming state or federal election to help put an end to this GEMA nonsense.

    1. MacGyver

      Re: Germany Calling

      They banned a dance recital of my daughter dancing to 1920's music, the audio in question was recorded with a camcorder mic in open air and you could barely hear the music over the parents clapping and cheering. It wasn't the complete song, it was less than 30 seconds of it, it didn't start at the beginning, and the video wasn't even publicly available. They have gone too far, and their ability to affect our recorded history is unsettling. It won't be long before the big OS providers are pressured into including services that remove the offending media from our computer automatically.

      What kind of creepy 1984 style world will we be living in, a world where our home movies have children dancing in silence.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Schauen nicht!

    Wir wissen, wo du wohnst.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And what about legal use?

    Fair use is just that, fair use. But if YouTube stop peoples ability to create and upload reviews of material, etc. then that stops fair use in its tracks. If YouTube continues to behave like this, then competing services like Fatal Error Network stand poised to snatch a degree of material that might otherwise have been destined for YouTube.

    This isn't going to play out overnight, though.

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