YouTube dealt blow by German copyright ruling

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The Aussies may have upset the the copyright apple-cart by ruling that ISP iiNet isn't responsible for any copyright infringing actions committed by its subscribers, but now another legal ruling in Germany could see YouTube facing massive royalties bill.

A German court has ruled that YouTube is responsible for content posted to the video sharing site.

Ranging from music videos posted by users through to the use of copyrighted soundtracks embedded in video clips submitted to the video sharing site, YouTube could be forced to pay a vast amount of money to music studios seeking royalties.

Arguing that YouTube has not done enough to curb copyright infringement, German royalty collection group, Gema wants YouTube to install filters that detect when when users attempt to upload music clips and block any suspected uploads.

YouTube has however has said that it takes no responsibility for the actions of its users.

Gema (who represent more than 60,000 German song writers) court case was based on 12 separate music clips uploaded to YouTube. 

If the ruling is enforced, it is likely to create major headaches for YouTube and could see the rate at which video clips are posted dropping significantly as video clips need to be manually checked and cleared to ensure that they are not infinging copyright once made available for online viewing.

The extent of the issue is potentially huge as an average of 60 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute.

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