YouTube can’t be held responsible for screening images uploaded on its site, a Spanish court said on Thursday, throwing out a case brought by a local TV channel over alleged copyright infringement.
Google, which owns the video-sharing phenomenon YouTube, immediately hailed the decision as a “clear victory for the internet”. Spanish private television channel Telecinco had accused YouTube of violating its intellectual property rights by broadcasting images that belonged to it. An initial ruling in 2008 backed Telecinco but Google challenged that decision and the Madrid court has now reversed the judgment on
appeal.
Telecinco believed that “the broadcast on the (YouTube) internet site of various audiovisual recordings…was a violation of the intellectual property rights of Telecinco,” the Madrid court said in its ruling, released on Thursday. But it is “physically impossible to control all the videos that are made available to users, as there are in fact more than 500 million”.
“YouTube is not a supplier of content and therefore has no obligation to control ex-ante the illegality” of what is on its site, said the ruling, issued in Spanish. “Its only obligation is to cooperate with the holders of the rights in order to immediately withdraw the content once the infraction is identified.”
“This decision reaffirms European law which recognizes that content owners (not service providers like YouTube) are in the best position to know whether a specific work is authorized to be on an internet hosting service,” Google said in a statement. AFP
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