YouTube Ordered To Remove Videos, Filter Future Uploads By German Court 215
suraj.sun sends this excerpt from Deutsche Welle:
"YouTube was told by a regional court in Hamburg on Friday not to display seven out of 12 contested clips without permission from the German copyright fee collecting society Gema. Gema claimed that its members were losing money every time their music was being displayed on YouTube. A proper licensing fee between the two sides expired in 2009. The Hamburg State Court ruled YouTube would in future have to install an efficient mechanism to filter out such content uploaded by users or face a fine of up to 250,000 euros ($330,000) for each case, or up to six months imprisonment. Knowing that a foolproof filter system looks next to impossible, Gema is now hoping that Google will finally agree to a new bilateral licensing treaty whereby the collecting society would not get an annual lump sum for the contested videos, but a fixed fee each time copyright-protected videos are watched."
Just withdraw from Germany. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope that Google plays hardball, and simply blacks out Youtube for Germany. The resulting user outcry would then be turned against Gema.
Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score:5, Funny)
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Why would they have to pay Gema? I'm quite sure that Rick Astley isn't German, and whatever company holds the copyrights to that song is located in the USA.
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Obviously not that much, or else they'd be pushing their legislators to fix the situation.
Blocking YouTube in Germany seems like a good solution to me; if they don't, it'll be economically nonviable to operate there with Euro$250k per-violation fees every time someone uploads something.
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That's very impressive, compared to the USA. Still, doesn't quite sound like enough to get the situation fixed, but time will tell. Maybe YouTube shutting down service and suggesting that people vote for the Pirate Party to fix the situation will be enough to get their agenda pushed through.
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Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score:5, Interesting)
Because income from YouTube in Germany is likely multiple orders of magnitude bigger then fine for individual infringement. You're forgetting that country is an economic powerhouse that is one of the very few places in the world that keeps on growing at a decent rate even in current economic climate with a lot of users that are wealthy enough to be desirable targets for premium advertising.
Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score:4, Insightful)
Does FRAND apply? (Score:4, Informative)
I had no idea what FRAND was, but a wikipedia search indicates it covers patents. This is a copyright dispute, not a patent dispute.
END COMMUNICATION
Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score:4, Funny)
Ever hear a mouse fart? Blocking Germany would be about as relevant to the Google brand in Germany.
Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score:5, Informative)
This won't happen.
Why not? Something similar already happened in the UK with Youtube regarding music performer royalties and other demands for lots of cash.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7933565.stm [bbc.co.uk]
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The sad thing is, I wonder how much of the Internet I (as an American) am going to lose over the next 10 years because we have to be TEAM AMERICA WORLD COPYRIGHT POLICE. It's sad that the country that basically invented this wonderful tool is now fucking up from the very people who funded it and are benefiting from it.
Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I dislike the USA's actions with regard to IP law, this article has absolutely nothing to do with US IP law or any of its cartels. Instead, it's about a German copyright cartel, though it's interestingly causing the exact same kind of problems (if not worse) that its US peers have been causing.
Don't blame the USA for BS going on in Germany. There's plenty of legitimate stuff to blame us for.
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Sounds like the German counterpart wants ridiculously higher fees and Youtube isn't willing to pay them.
Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have to go that far. Since they're only concerned about MUSIC, all Google has to do is give German viewers a different audio track. Maybe saying something like (in German and English):
"The audio for this video has been filtered by request of Gema, who may be contacted at <address (street, phone number, email)>."
Have it repeat the entire video length (in both languages). I'd say replacing the audio portion of the video with that message is an efficient filter. YouTube still serves up the video and blames Gema for the mess.
Do it for all videos seen by German viewers.
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Only if you can get David Hasselhoff to sing it.
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Only if you can get David Hasselhoff to sing it.
Put a few cheesburgers on the floor... he'll do it...
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Very few people will understand. The majority will only see that Youtube's sound for videos is malfunctioning, blame Google, and move on. Because most people do not understand the connection between "who they vote for" and "what political decisions are taken".
Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet in other news, a month ago Slashdot reported that 7% of German voters in the Bundesland Saarland voted for the German Pirate Party [slashdot.org].
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Can Google donate to a German political party?
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only in the way that the monopolistically collected money by gema goes to whoever they deem is popular.... like most such organizations.
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Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right there with you, and I'm in Germany. I have to use tor for about two videos in five anyway, so they might as well block it completely and generate some political pressure against these asshats. Pirate party's already polling at around 10% these days; a bit more blatant censorship will just make the network rights issue even bigger.
They need to do this (Score:5, Informative)
while its still fresh. Imagine the look on GEMA's face when all videos from Germany are blocked or better yet deleted. The applause Google would get from the rest of the world would overshadow what they would lose from cutting Germany off.
If they don't want to do that then at least
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So they lose all their users from Germany to dailymotion.com, clipfish.de and so on. And GEMA will simply move on to sue the next biggest competitor until it finds one who will accept the deal.
German users will get used to using a different site and forget about the whole thing eventually. Besides the Pirateparty is already set to take >10% of the vote in Germany, it seems unlikely that disabling youtube would help them grow even faster than that.
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Please Google do this. End your monopoly in Germany and allow the rise of competitors!
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Please Google do this. End your monopoly in Germany and allow the rise of competitors!
So true! If only Bing, Yahoo, Ask, or some other search engine [ebizmba.com] were available there.
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Oops; we're talking about uploading videos, not search engine. My bad.
Not that there aren't LOTS of alternatives [vimeo.com], but many of them seem to be, shall we say, "specialized".
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What makes you think that GEMA wouldn't get the German court to force the same compliance on the competitors?
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Google should comply wit the court order by blocking these videos. Ideally, they should block them by redirecting users to videos by bands not controlled by Gema with a message as to why they were redirected. If the users like the redirected videos enough, well that solves the problem completely.
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I was thinking the exact same thing. Let the public do the "lobbying" for Google and get the content publishers to shut the hell up. They're out of control all over the planet and need to be taken out back if you know what I mean.
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I hope that Google plays hardball, and simply blacks out Youtube for Germany. The resulting user outcry would then be turned against Gema.
They'd better do that, lest Gema resort to click-fraud/click-jacking to boost their revenues at Google's expense.
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I hope that Google plays hardball, and simply blacks out Youtube for Germany. The resulting user outcry would then be turned against Gema.
Are you sure this is a battle you want to start? Germany can fight back by uploading, well, just some of their regular old music videos [youtube.com].
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Or... (Score:4, Interesting)
Or Google could just block access to YouTube from German IPs and let them see what they've really won.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm picturing a brutally honest landing page, explaining why.
The unfortunate part is that they can't afford to do that here in the US.
Re:Or... (Score:4, Interesting)
GEMA doesn't reprepresent the interests of those abroad they send money to. They don't represent the interests of local labels. They don't represent the interest of local artists.
Their past business model was to sue boozers that didn't pay up, kindergardens and private citizens to fuel their bloated body of wasteful red tape.
Due to GEMA unwillingness to get a deal on all things online recent contracts with artists FORBID GEMA TO SPEAK ON THEIR BEHALF TO GOOGLE AND GET STUFF BLOCKED.
Idiocy, red tape, bloated, ignorance. Chauffeur driven Maybachs. For teh starving artists
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Every music video blocked in Germany is a click saved, and more money for GEMA (according to GEMA's logic), so let it happen!
Re:Or... (Score:4, Interesting)
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They will be thinking that when the German public and German artists start screaming at them for pulling the plug on Youtube. It's a self-destructive move. Google can afford to sit on its ass, and let GEMA self-destruct itself.
If not filterable... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If not filterable... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gema will do that for them. It's a very simple calculation after all: something like 90% of the videos will have some Gema affiliate copyrighted music (if not more, if you ask them), then take the number of hits to YouTube from German IP addresses, well 90% of that number times a license fee of say E 0,50 a song (still give or take a 50% discount on the iTunes price) gives the number Google must pay.
OK, I think the "pull out of Germany" option might be the cheaper one after all. Never mind.
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The reason that filtering the videos is difficult is because they get rejected if the filter flags them. That encourages an arms race between the filtering software on one side and the users on the other, an arms race that the users are always going to win. If users aren't annoyed by the filtering there's nothing to encourage them to change the fingerprint of the video and writing a piece of filtering software, even with very high accuracy, becomes relatively simple.
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GEMA doesn't care if it's not 100% correct for the fee calculation, they can live with the small loss because they think it still earns them a lot more money.
They only want 100% accuracy for the upload filter because they know that can't be done, and they want to force Google to agree to the per-view calculation.
Sometimes (Score:2)
That's for video's specifically targeted at sharing the "infringing" content.
But they also take issue with people uploading their own videos /w copyrighted soundtracks, and how about if I upload a video of myself singing "Song X" (I'm not sure if this is considered "fair use", though it may considered "cruel and unusual punishment" given my singing ability).
Logic? (Score:2)
This is either a sign of complete, magical belief in technology or judicial incompetence.
Unfortunately I lean towards the latter.
Or its just Germans being German.
And then ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"... the collecting society would not get an annual lump sum for the contested videos, but a fixed fee each time copyright-protected videos are watched ..."
And then start paying people to watch the videos.
Profit!
Profit! (Score:2)
"Gema is now hoping that Google will finally agree to a new bilateral licensing treaty whereby the collecting society would not get an annual lump sum for the contested videos, but a fixed fee each time copyright-protected videos are watched."
1. Get YouTube to give you two cents each time one is watched
2. Go to a third world country/botnet and pay a penny per click to get viewers
3. Profit!
Seriously, pull out of Germany and let the people tell their politicians how they really feel. I imagine they will be we
"Bilateral"??? (Score:3)
Re:"Bilateral"??? (Score:5, Funny)
It's perfectly bilateral. There's a meeting of minds and consideration on both sides.
Just like when Vinnie and Mr. Sung agree that (A) Mr. Sung will pay Vinnie 1/3 of the gross till of Mr. Sung's convenience store, or $2000 (whichever is more) each week; and (B) Vinnie agrees that Mr. Sung's convenience store won't accidentally burn down.
the vulnerability of single gatekeepers (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the problem with allowing single entities (no matter HOW they are intentioned) to be the gatekeepers to the internet. It makes the entire system vulnerable to censorship. The more diverse it is, the more resilient it is.
So remind me again: why is it that we seem to want to allow a few giant companies like Facebook and Google to control all our content?
Re:the vulnerability of single gatekeepers (Score:4, Insightful)
Because when you have dozens of smaller players, none of them have the warchest available to defend your rights and will, instead, capitulate to the smallest demand. When you have mammoth agencies who are interested in protecting the internet (more Google, less Facebook), you will also have the mammoth warchest to fund it.
If you had a dozen smaller players competing for video bandwidth in Germany, you'd get some paying the licensing fee, others pulling out, with a net effect that Gema gets money while there is no outcry from German citizens. WIth Google/Youtube, you first got an actual court case, and pulling out of Germany becomes a real, viable response that will likely result in a lot of complaining by German citizens, which is much more likely to get the government of Germany to look at legislative options to tone down Gema and entice Youtube to return.
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available to defend your rights and will, instead
So your assertion is that youtube cares about defending my rights?
*blink*
Uhhh.. sure they do.
They'll do what causes them least financial harm, and that is all. Big companies have a long history of caving into censorship demands. The ONLY viable defence is to not put all our eggs in one basket.
I can't understand Germany (Score:2)
I just can't understand Germany lately. This is a great country with really enlightened people running it for the most part but their positions on IP - software patents (legal in Germany) and draconic copyright measures are just counter to everything else the Germans do in terms of forward thinkingness.
I am guessing it's because they've drunk the IP Kool-Aide and think that all these measures are somehow making for a stronger economy ... or something....
Re:I can't understand Germany (Score:5, Interesting)
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Corporations are making treaties now? (Score:2)
Last I checked, treaties are between governments. Between corporations, those are supposed to be contracts.
The difference is that treaties and governments are supposed to supersede any contracts (e.g. you can't expect a contract of indentured servitude to have any force in the US).
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yes, but who is actually writing the treaties that governments are signing? My guess is that the corporations are the ones writing the treaties, just like they already write US laws
Google has to do something (Score:5, Interesting)
a GEMA filter for Google... (Score:2)
Err, Umm.... (Score:2)
if they can't identify the videos, how are they supposed to count the video views?
*baffled*
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They simply take a cut of each video that GEMA claims breaks their copyrights, this is more or less what happens now (but with a yearly lump sum to cover any possible infringement until 2008). GEMA is the one that selects what videos fall under that currently (& if other companies are any example they will claim stuff even if they don't own the copyrights).
Losing money each time watched... make me laugh (Score:5, Insightful)
Without youtube most of these people's works would have faded from public view or remained obscure.
Easy, fun fix. (Score:2)
Re-direct all german traffic to servers in the US. Turn off the German ones for a while and save some power.
Only allow those requests to view the 240 version of all videos. Not only will it be lower resolution, but slower than usual, too.
Put a nice big banner above the videos explaining why, with contact information of GEMA.
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I agree with this wholeheartedly. I'm sick of the money grubbing and trying to put the problem of copyright on people who shouldn't have to worry about it. Gema doesn't want copyrighted crap on Youtube? Then use the process in place, just like everyone else.
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Then pay these people for every view for every video that matches the audio 100%. If its even 0.001% off, dont count the hit. Alternatly let the GEMA try to figure out what videos infringe and get clearance with Google to agree before paying up.
In other words make it a huge pain in the neck for GEMA. Make it cost more for them to figure out what videos are actually infringing than any value
Filter Future Uploads By German Court (Score:2)
Imprisonment? (Score:2)
Perhaps I'm missing something, but how would they imprison YouTube? Would all the videos have bars in front of them? Are they going to round up all of Google Gerrmany's employees and send them to prison? Would just the head of Google's Germany office get sent to jail? How exactly do you send a company
Filter Future Uploads By German Court (Score:2)
Why the fuck is a court uploading videos?
Editing! (Score:2)
How about:
YouTube Ordered By German Court To Remove Videos, Filter Future Uploads
or
German Court Orders YouTube to Remove Videos and Filter Future Uploads
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But dangling modifiers are so much fun! Though in this case, the double-meaning isn't nearly as amusing. I wanted to ask what kind of riveting material was being uploaded by the German Courts, and why it garnered enough attention that someone ordered YouTube to filter it.
kaching! (Score:2)
> but a fixed fee each time copyright-protected videos are watched
Gee, there would be any way to game that system, now would there?
Google's Best Option Is Compliance (Score:2)
I think Google's best option
German music? (Score:2)
You mean there are German bands other than The Scorpions, Kraftwerk, Ramstein, Nina, and Tangerine Dream? (I deliberately exclude David Hasselhoff, no one likes him except the Germans anyway)
On a more serious note. Google/YouTube is unlikely to negotiate with people attempting extortion. Germany, get ready to kiss YouTube goodbye.
If Filtering is Impossible... (Score:2)
how can per click payment be possible? If they knew it required payment, they would have known to filter it.
What? (Score:2)
I'm lost here... For example, assuming that youtube was the only way to watch videos and all GEMA video was blocked, how GEMA would gain anything if nobody would know that her videos even exist? What these GEMA executives have in their heads?
The German court probably doesn't post many videos (Score:2)
No big deal. I'll bet that German court hasn't uploaded very many videos.
Anyone know that the German Court's YouTube ID is? I did a search and I didn't see anything obvious. Maybe the "uploads by [the] German Court" have all been removed already?
Re:IP wars will lead to scorched earth tactics (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, more to the point, once those Gema represented figured out that they had just lopped off their own noses despite their face, it's likely Google would be in the far stronger position at the bargaining table.
At the end of the day, Youtube holds all the cards. It's the most visited video delivery site on the planet. You can be sure that if 80 million Germans suddenly found a message saying "Because of your courts and GEMA you will no longer be able to use YouTube", it wouldn't be long before GEMA came crawling back begging.
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At the end of the day, Youtube holds all the cards. It's the most visited video delivery site on the planet. You can be sure that if 80 million Germans suddenly found a message saying "Because of your courts and GEMA you will no longer be able to use YouTube", it wouldn't be long before GEMA came crawling back begging.
Your logic escapes me. The GEMA is not interested in how many people watch Youtube. They are interested in how much money is generated by Youtube for the music industry. Google, on the other hand, would have a massive loss of advertising income.
Re:IP wars will lead to scorched earth tactics (Score:4, Informative)
The fines are higher than the advertising income.
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The fines HAVE to be higher than the advertising income. What would be the point of fine that were less than what they were making from advertising? "Oh, what you are doing is wrong, but keep doing what you are doing and just pay a portion of that money in fines." Whether they should be fined our not is certainly up for debate, but the fines being more than what they make from the infraction certainly isn't.
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Hardly a massive loss, considering Germany is only a small fraction of the total customer base. And it's GEMA's alleged constituency who would be suffering as they would no longer have access, nor would potential customers in Germany, to their performances.
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you think gema cares shit about the artists it represents? if they did you'd think that the artists would be free to perform their own music for free? WELL THEY ARE NOT!
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You can be sure that if 80 million Germans suddenly found a message saying "Because of your courts and GEMA you will no longer be able to use YouTube", it wouldn't be long before GEMA came crawling back begging.
Youtube already blocks quite a few current music video clips for german IPs saying "The video is not available in Germany because it might contain music not licensed by GEMA."
There's a firefox plugin (ProxTube) which detects exactly this and reloads the video using a non-german proxy.
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Germany is only 80M ppl.
Germany is the third richest country in the world.
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Yes, third... right after the US, China, and Japan... and maybe India.
The GDP does not measure wealth, but income. Sure, China and maybe India have a higher GDP for 2 years now IIRC, but they are still quite poor in comparison, i.e. the amount of stuff _saved_ over the years is still much lower.
The amount of wealth per capita available right now is probably more important for a decision from Google than potential wealth in 15 or 20 years.
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Re:YouTube hasn't been the same since Google takeo (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because opponents see YouTube as a piggy bank that you can shake and make it rain money.
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The 302 thing usually signifies involvement by the 'church' of Scientology. For reasons unknown, 302 meant something significant to L Ron Hubbard. Read "Battlefield Earth" and pay attention to how many times the number 302 appears. It's kind of weird. Maybe he was a fan of Ford V8s?
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Maybe it's just because you visit crap on the tube?
the from youtube section:
-Rios: 'There Are Tons of People in Government' Who are..
(some commie shit? 330 views, no idea why it's here, maybe it was trending just then when I visited the page).
-NORTH KOREA PERSPECTIVE
-New Photo Shows Zimmerman's Bloody Head
-ONLY IN MALAYSIA
etc.
(then there's some minecraft stuff, some galaxy samsung III leak vid, some ps3 reviews which I couldn't give a shit about etc. I think these are mostly composed from page history _outs
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block all music that not release under cc-sa/cc-0 conditions
that would block all established music and allow independent musicians to release their content
It truly the only way you could block all infringement.
Logically, legally, and morally one would think this a good idea.
However, it fails when you have a system that allows audio of wild birds singing in a forest to be blocked/removed because of false claims of copyright infringement. Add things like SoundExchange (US version of GEMA? Or would that be RIAA? Or is GEMA SoundExchange+German RIAA?) that takes a cut from any & all music regardless of the artist's desires (they offer a cut to the artists...they just have to join and strengthen the organization!)
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I wonder just why some people here seem to think that stopping copyright infringers (impossible) is an end which justifies the means. Here are the usual solutions: cut off internet connections of accused copyright infringers (bad because of collateral damage), use automated systems to detect and remove supposedly copyrighted material (bad because of collateral damage), and then there's always giving copyright holders the ability to do whatever they please (bad because of collateral damage). All of those hav