YouTube Wins vs. Telecinco In Spain 68
eldavojohn writes "A Spanish judge has dismissed a case brought against YouTube by Spanish television station Telecinco for violating Telecinco's intellectual property. The ruling reads in part: 'YouTube is not a supplier of content and therefore has no obligation to control ex-ante the illegality of those. Its only obligation is to cooperate with the holders of the rights in order to immediately withdraw the content once the infraction is identified.' Telecinco brought the case against YouTube when it found that episodes of its television programs were turning up on YouTube prior to their official air and release date on their television channel. Things are looking up for Google's video service as YouTube was granted safe harbor from Viacom earlier this year in the United States. You can find an official response from Google on their EU Policy Blog."
Re:weird (Score:2, Informative)
Takedown notices only apply in the US
And YouTube complies with US law. In fact, they make it very easy to send a takedown request: http://www.youtube.com/copyright_complaint_form [youtube.com]
Re:weird (Score:2, Informative)
You are wrong, there *are* takedown notices in Spain as well:
La Comisión de la Propiedad Intelectual, órgano creado por el Ministerio de Cultura, se dirigirá al responsable de la página web que considera que ha vulnerado los derechos de Propiedad Intelectual y le pedirá la retirada del contenido conflictivo. Si éste no es retirado después de que la comisión lo haya solicitado hasta en dos ocasiones, el denunciado podrá presentarle sus alegaciones
(too lazy to translate but Google is your friend)
However, it seems in Spain there is a special comission who is the one in charge of issuing the notices, thus you cannot send everyone you like such kind of notices (well, you can, but they wont care).
At least that is what I read from there, maybe a Spanish guy can shed more light?
Re:Soooo what's in it for Torrents?? (Score:2, Informative)
Not completely. Only rulings by the "Superiour Spanish Court" (Tribunal Superior de Justicia) can be used as a precedent under the spanish law. Nevertheless, there have been *many* lawsuits against indexing sites (emule, torrent, megavideo, etc.) and *none* of them have been ruled out against the websites. Despite that, some of them settled by agreement where the website owner accepted a symbolic fine in exchange for preventing any further legal actions (and their associated lawsuit costs).