Court Ordered YouTube to Remove Copyright Blocking Warnings

Music industry (namely anti-piracy group GEMA) celebrates another victory in its battle with the largest video streaming service in the world. A few days ago a court handed down its ruling, saying that YouTube has to remove blocking messages claiming that the anti-piracy outfit is responsible for thousands of videos being blocked in Germany on copyright grounds.

To see the scale of the problem you can just search for the term “unavailable in Germany”. There are thousands of complaints out there, from ordinary people right up to record label bosses, all claiming that the licensing dispute with collecting society GEMA is causing problems.

That was a complex battle which started with a simple disagreement. 7 years ago the parties reached a licensing agreement for YouTube to use works from GEMA’s repertoire. However, 5 years ago the deal broke down when GEMA’s demand of €0.12 per stream was rejected by YouTube. Back in 2010, GEMA sued to have YouTube block certain titles so that they couldn’t be viewed locally. Two years later and after much legal wrangling, the German court ruled that YouTube could be held responsible for the “infringing” videos and must therefore render content unavailable in Germany.

This is where the problems start. YouTube remains a constant source of frustration for local users because of the blocking of thousands of videos after the GEMA dispute. When German users are trying to access popular videos, they face a message saying they should blame GEMA for the inconvenience. As you can understand, people don’t like GEMA much now.

In attempt to solve the problem, the anti-piracy outfit applied for an injunction to force YouTube to change the messages. Finally, the District Court of Munich agreed with GEMA and issued an injunction to force the video service to comply. Now YouTube will have to change the message to state that videos are unavailable because of the lack of a licensing agreement between the two parties.

Google, which owns YouTube, said it was studying the decision. The company explained it needs to examine the reasons for the judgment before making a decision about how to respond. When the latest court decision is made final, YouTube faces fines of up to 250,000 euros per breach.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.