back to article Google whacks Spanish TV station in court

A Madrid court has thrown out copyright infringement charges brought against YouTube by Spanish TV station Telecinco. The station, owned by Silvio Berlusconi, won a previous case against Google's video service in 2008. The court today dismissed charges and found it the responsibility of copyright owners to guard their own …

COMMENTS

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  1. John G Imrie

    The rise of the Internet

    or the fall of Silvio Berlusconi? I'm not sure which.

    1. Fatman
      Flame

      RE: The fall of Silvio Berlusconi

      I am sure that there are many of you "lucky" enough to have seen one of the "Hitler" parodies that clog You Tube.

      If a sequel featuring Benito Mussolini, were ever to be developed; perhaps Mr. Berlusconi could audition for the lead role.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It doesn't matter if he does fall

      He bounces.

  2. Tom 13
    Pint

    While I like the idea that copyright holders have the responsibility

    to police infringement on their own, here's the problem I'm left with:

    If the company best known for it's computational indexing and search engines can't police infringement on a site they host, how is anybody else with resources magnitudes of orders less than Google supposed to do it?

    Pint because maybe it will help me come up with an answer.

    1. Ef'd
      Pint

      Cheers

      Copyright holders know exactly what to look out for and when someone actually violates their copyright.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      It's a bit more complicated than that.

      There IS the practical problem of looking through 500 million videos, but that is not the most important part.

      If they could, how do they determine if the poster of the video had permission or not?

      Just because something "professional looking" is there doesn't mean that it is there illegally.

      This is especially relevant with the increase in "viral marketing" being used by marketing companies more and more. Was that "cute" commercial video posted by a savvy marketing department or ripped from the TV illegally by someone who just liked it?

      Ultimately, only the copyright holder knows the answer.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "a big win for the internet"

    Does this mean that google's man in Europe

    a) thinks the internet is a single entity, with set of values

    b) thinks google is the internet

    Answers on a postcode to ...

  4. ratfox

    Good for Google, and for us, but....

    "YouTube offers content owners tools to remove copyright infringing content and this means that it is the responsibility of the copyright owner – not YouTube – to identify and tell YouTube when infringing content is on its website"

    This argument really is a blanket get-out-of-jail-free card for copyright infringement. The way it sounds, copyright owners apparently have to play whack-a-mole endlessly just to remove content that can be re-uploaded and re-indexed in seconds.

    You could practically ignore copyright laws with your website as long as:

    1) You offer a way for copyright owners to complain

    2) You can claim you did not put it yourself

    3) You have "too many users" to control what they upload

    Good for us, but I can imagine copyright owners shaking their heads in disbelief.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No crowd source solution either

      Because only the copyright holder can complain about infringement.

      On youtube, I can flag for inappropiate content, but I can't flag it up as possible copyright infringement unless I'm the offended party.

    2. Ammaross Danan
      FAIL

      Title

      I agree, this ruling is a loss for copyright holders due to the "whack-a-mole" result. If YouTube was more of a no-name, or little-known outlet (as there are many YouTube wanna-bes I'm sure), the copyright holder may not even be aware of the infringement, but still suffering losses or what-have-you because of it. It's only when it's be around the block in smaller channels so much that it makes its way out to the likes of YouTube that the holder even becomes aware of the infringement in the first place. It is a sad day when copyright holders, themselves, have to run a Google-esque indexing/searching spiderbot to sniff out their works on websites.

    3. Rattus Rattus

      Whack-a-mole

      Quite honestly - so effin' what? Holding a copyright comes with responsibilities as well as rights. You have to police your own copyrights, and if that's too difficult and/or expensive, then maybe it's not worth keeping the copyright. Or at least not keeping it for the whole eternity-plus-a-billion-years that copyrights last these days.

  5. JaitcH
    FAIL

    Poor old Berlio, another 'bad hair' / toupe day for him

    Not only is he a failing star in bed, and his wife has left him, but now in the world of business he is failing.

    Of course had this been Italy Berlio would have simply passed a law.

  6. Tim Bates

    Not just a win for Youtube

    They're right... It is a win for the internet. This sets a precedent in that country, and to a lesser extent, the world.

    Copyright holders should be tracking their property - I saw this as someone who DOES have intellectual property, and HAS had to report a violation and ask for a takedown. It's not much fun to do, but why should I expect Google to do it when it's none of their business?

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