Hamburg court ruled that YouTube is not required to proactively track user uploads

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    A Hamburg court (Germany) ruled that YouTube should not actively monitor user-uploaded content, including pirated content, according to torrentfreak . By decision of the court, YouTube is not responsible for the actions of users, however, must make efforts to stop copyright infringement.

    YouTube has been struggling with GEMA, the music copyright group, for nearly five years.

    In one of the most high-profile lawsuits on this subject, a group of individuals claiming to represent the interests of more than 70,000 artists blamed users for uploading to YouTube. GEMA's goal was to tighten proactive tracking of all kinds of copyright infringement by the Google video service.

    When these claims were rejected in 2012 by the lower court, the GEMA appealed the verdict, but the Hamburg Court of Appeal upheld the verdict and upheld the earlier ruling.

    According to the Hamburg court, YouTube does not bear any responsibility for the actions of users and their manipulations with video content, and is not obliged to report violations to law enforcement agencies. “Youtube should not control the content of the content or take part in investigations of the unlawfulness of user actions (copyright infringement),” the court said.

    But not all news related to this lawsuit is good for Google. The court emphasized that YouTube should do as much as possible to prevent copyright infringement. “But if the service provider receives a notice of a clear violation of the law, it must not only immediately remove the content, but also take measures that guarantee that further violations of this nature will not be possible in the future.”

    YouTube previously stated that copyright holders could use an internal content identification system to find copyright infringing files. But copyright holders , including GEMA, do not want to take any action on their own(including using a similar system, as this will entail labor costs on their part).

    GEMA copyright holders are disappointed that the court did not support their position regarding the blaming YouTube for user actions and is still counting on victory in this dispute. “The ruling of the Court of Appeal proves that YouTube cannot escape responsibility for copyright infringement and that it cannot transfer it to copyright holders,” says GEMA CEO Harald Hecker.

    It’s not completely clear what additional measures YouTube should take, but, for example, law firm Rush, which works in the German music industry, believes that keyword filtering is a viable option.

    The Hamburg Court also ruled that YouTube did not quickly remove seven copyright-infringing videos. In another five cases under consideration, the video service worked satisfactorily. Following the sentencing, Google and GEMA filed counter appeals, but both were rejected.

    The full sentence has not yet been announced; the Court only verbally announced its decision at one of the hearings. The full text of the verdict will be published before the end of this month, which gives the parties to the conflict time to prepare for appeal.

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