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Deutsch: YouTube in Spanien vom Vorwurf der Urheberrechtsverletzung freigesproc...

Google has won a battle against Spanish broadcaster Telecinco which brought the company to court in June 2008 claiming that the company's service YouTube was liable for the copyrighted material posted by its users.

Spanish Commercial Court no.7 of Madrid ruled against Telecino, following the EU E-commerce directive which says that a website is responsible for the content uploaded by its users only if a notification of allegedly copyright infringing content is made. Once the notification is received, the website has to remove the respective content.

Telecino claimed that Youtube already had procedures in place for copyright owners to identify and notify the website of any videos that allegedly breach copyright but Google argued that screening material before it was made available would be an impossible action.

"This decision demonstrates the wisdom of European laws. More than 24 hours of video are loaded on to YouTube every minute. If internet sites had to screen all videos, photos and text before allowing them on a website, many popular sites - not just YouTube, but Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others - would grind to a halt," was Aaron Ferstman's comment on Google;s European public policy blog.

Google has also been careful to reaffirm that it respects copyright laws: "We are very pleased with today's ruling. The win today confirms what we have said throughout this process: YouTube complies with the law. The ruling recognises that YouTube is merely an intermediary content-hosting service and therefore cannot be obliged to pre-screen videos before they are uploaded."

Telecino, which was bound to pay for the trial expenses, stated that the judge's decision was only trying to avoid "taking a decision that would have placed in checkmate the national and international trade of YouTube and its owner Google" and that it intended to defend itself from the attacks against its rights and to appeal to superior legal courts.

Spanish court throws out copyright infringement claims against Youtube (23.09.2010)
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1735045/spanish-court-throws-...

YouTube wins against Telecinco in the tribunal(only in Spanish, 23.09.2010)
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2010/09/23/comunicacion/1285234927.html

Google wins YouTube case in Spain (23.09.2010)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/sep/23/google-wins-youtube-c...

A big win for the Internet (23.09.2010)
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/09/big-win-for-internet.ht...