File -- Exterior view of Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., is seen in this Oct. 19, 2006 file photo (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File).
On Thursday, Sep. 23, 2010, a court in Spain sided with Google in a dispute with the broadcaster Telecinco. Telecinco stated that Google’s online video-sharing service, most famously known as YouTube, did not screen television clips for copyright violations before posting them on the site.
A similar ruling occurred in the United States in June, when a judge rejected any copyright infringement claims against YouTube by the media company Viacom. Similar to the outcome of the court in the United States, the judge in Madrid said YouTube was not liable as long as it removed copyright material when notified by the rights holder.
“This win confirms what we have always said: YouTube operates within the law,” Google said in a statement.
That principle has not always existed in Europe. A court case earlier this month involved videos of the singer Sarah Brightman. A German court ruled that YouTube must pay compensation to musical rights holders when their work is uploaded without permission.
Google also faces copyright infringement claims in other YouTube-related cases in Italy, France, Belgium and other European countries.
Telecinco, an Italian media corporation controlled by the family of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi noted that it would appeal the Madrid decision. The judge recognized the company’s need to protect its copyrighted material.
“Telecinco welcomes the contents of the court decision and reaffirms its commitment to defend itself against attacks on its intellectual property rights with all the resources at its disposal,” the broadcaster said.
YouTube had argued that it was a “host.” They stated that YouTube was like an Internet service provider, not a media service. Under European Union hosting services, YouTube is granted protection from liability for any content users receive.
Google has also set a system called Content ID, which alerts media owners if their content has been uploaded to YouTube. They can then ask YouTube to take it down or to sell ads alongside it.
“Screening material before it is posted is unfeasible,” the company says, “because of the volume of video uploaded.”
While lawyers say the European protections for hosts are similar to America’s “safe harbor” requirements in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which lowers a host’s liability, European courts have presented a range of explanations.
In Brightman’s case in Germany, the judge stated that YouTube’s safeguards against copyright infringement were insufficient.
There has been much question of whether video sites such as YouTube should be responsible for the content posted on them by users. It has been brought up in cases not related to copyright issues.
After videos were posted of a schoolboy who was being bullied by classmates, three Google executives were found guilty for privacy violations in Italy last winter.
“The issue of when a host was liable has been getting a bit vague, and some hosts in Europe have been getting a little bit nervous,” said Kim Walker, a partner at the law firm Pinsent Masons in London.
“The Spanish case pushes things back a little bit in the direction of where they are across the Atlantic.”
