German court might just make YouTube, internet unworkable

GEMA, the German rights organisation, has won a significant victory in a case against Google.

In short, the German courts have decided that YouTube is responsible for the content posted on its site, not the individual posting videos, and as such should be paying royalties for any music that winds up there.

BBC News explains what the ruling means:

If enforced, the ruling could also slow the rate at which video is posted to the site as any music clip would have to be cleared for copyright before being used.

With sixty hours of new video hitting the servers every sixty seconds, the "slow the rate" here would mean, in effect, stop video being pushed to YouTube.

It's a silly move for GEMA to seek this sort of judgement, as it won't stop the content being posted online - their pyrrhic victory over Rapidshare shows how all they do is scatter the content - and backs into a corner an organisation which is sort-of-trying to do the right thing.

The obvious move would be for YouTube to just bow out of Germany. And who, exactly, would be better off as a result of that?

I'll bet Pinterest were watching this judgement with, erm, interest.

GEMA slaps Rapidshare

Germany's version of the RIAA has succeeded in getting a court to fine Rapidshare for alleged offences against copyright. [Google translated version of the page]

The detail seems to be based on 5,000 tracks which - apparently - someone had been using Rapidshare to, erm, share rapidly; the onus, says the court, is on the file-sharing service to make sure that it isn't hosting unlicensed music. There's a €24million fine, as well.

Bad news for Rapidshare, good news for GEMA. Although, perhaps, not as good as they seem to think:

Dr. Harald Heker, Chief Executive Officer of GEMA: "The decision of the regional court in Hamburg is a milestone in the fight against the illegal use of musical works on the Internet. GEMA will continue to protect its members from online piracy. We are confident in this way to be able to achieve the reduction of illegal use of the GEMA repertoire on the Internet to a negligible level. "

Really? You think that closing down one of the dozens and dozens of file-sharing services is going to be that significant?

Maybe they're thinking that they can spend some of those €24million on carrying on the fight. Just as soon as the leprechaun delivers them.

Guten abend: YouTube pulls German videos

There is some soothing balm for the PRS in the news that Google and GEMA have failed to reach a royalty agreement: GEMA's demands are 50% higher than PRS are looking for, which does at least mean that the PRS is no longer the organisation with the slimmest grasp on what online music is really worth.

As in the UK, music videos are now being switched off all across YouTube.de.