YouTube wins copyright victory in Europe

COPYRIGHT This does not prevent all online platforms from being obliged to put in place real solutions to fight against copyright infringements

YouTube has won a copyright victory in European courts. On Thursday, the Court of Justice of the European Union ( CJEU ) rendered a judgment concerning the liability of online platforms vis-à-vis illegal content posted by their users. By judging them irresponsible as soon as they put in place rapid means to remove or block access to problematic content.

Google’s video platform was the subject of a complaint filed by a music producer after several of its copyrighted works were released on YouTube in 2008. In its defense, it has installed a button on the site to report illegal content and it uses software to recognize protected content. So the CJEU considered that YouTube had put in place the necessary means to fight against the illegal publication of content protected by copyright. “It thus appears that this operator has deployed technical measures aimed at credibly and effectively countering copyright violations on its platform,” the Court concluded.

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YouTube is in the nails

According to the CJEU, online platforms are not held responsible for copyright infringing content published by their users as long as they offer tools to combat this practice. “Unless it contributes, beyond the simple provision of the platform, to give the public access to such content in violation of copyright”, the operator of the platform is not held responsible. On the other hand, if the latter has “concrete knowledge of the illegal provision of protected content” and that he “refrains from erasing it or blocking access to it promptly”, or does not place “appropriate technical measures”, then he is guilty of copyright infringement.

In response to the European Court of Justice ruling, a Google spokesperson said that “in the past 12 months alone we have paid the music industry $ 4 billion, of which more than 30% come from revenue linked to user-generated content ”.

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