BERLIN – On Friday, a German court ruled that YouTube must install filters to prevent users from loading music videos with copyrights reserved for organizations that charge for their use.
The Hamburg state court ruled in favor of the German GEMA. The company sued Google’s YouTube for uploading 12 music videos that belonged to them. The organization represents 60,000 German composers and musicians.
Youtube said they are not responsible for the content uploaded by users. They also insisted that they examine and even block the images that are copyrighted by other companies.
YouTube now offers a software that allows users to identify videos that contain licensed materials thus making it possible to detect violations.
The Hamburg court ruled that after detecting a possible violation, the site should use the software to prevent further infringement of copyright.
The court also ordered Youtube to install a new program that filters key words connected to uploaded videos for possible copyright violation. These key words can be anything from the names of musician to the title of the compositions. This will allow them to catch versions of a song that seem somewhat different, such as live recordings.
“Only platform operator is required to lock the video and take appropriate measures to prevent further violations of copyright infringement after being notified,” the court said. “There is no obligation to monitor all the videos uploaded to the platform,” he said.
Kerstin Becker, a lawyer for GEMA, said the ruling is a great success for GEMA.
