YouTube could face huge royalty bill after losing music clip copyright battle in Germany

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2012-04-21

Video-sharing site YouTube could be forced to pay a huge royalties bill after a German court ruled that the website must take down copyrighted music clips.

The Hamburg court said that YouTube is ultimately responsible for the content that users post, and that it must do more to stop people uploading copyrighted material.

According to The Telegraph, the court asked the Google-owned website to install filters that would automatically detect when users try to post music clips whose rights are held by German royalty collection group, Gema.

YouTube's existing policies claim the site is simply a platform for users to upload material.

When YouTube is informed about copyright violations, however, it says it removes the related content from the site as soon as possible.

Gema represents approximately 60,000 German musicians and song writers, but it brought a test case based on just seven clips posted to the site.

According to the paper, YouTube had held talks about royalties with Gema, but they broke down in 2010.

If YouTube is subsequently forced to pay royalties on all the material it hosts, the bill would run into many millions of euros, the paper said.

Meanwhile, Google has said it was preparing a response to the German ruling.

Source: Germany News.Net

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