The AchieVer Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 YouTube is Not Liable for Copyright Infringing Videos, Appeal Court Rules The Higher Regional Court of Vienna, Austria, has ruled that YouTube can't be held liable for infringing videos uploaded by users. The Court overturned a previous verdict which held that YouTube takes an "active role," which disqualifies it from safe harbor protection. Rightsholder Puls 4 is disappointed with the outcome and will take the case to the Supreme Court. On an average day, roughly half a million hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. As with any user-generated content site, this also includes copyright-infringing content. YouTube processes takedown notices and uses its Content-ID system to automatically remove allegedly infringing content to address this. However, major copyright holders are not all happy with the platform’s efforts. Record labels want to see more compensation, for example, and others want YouTube to do more to prevent pirated videos from appearing on the site. In Austria, this led to a lawsuit between the local television channel Puls 4 and YouTube. In an initial order last summer, the court ruled that the video platform can be held directly liable for users’ copyright infringements. YouTube was not seen as a neutral intermediary and should do more to prevent infringing uploads. The court noted that YouTube takes several motivated actions to actively organize and optimize how videos are displayed. By doing so, it becomes more than a neutral hosting provider. Therefore, it can’t rely on a safe harbor defense. “Through the connections, sorting, filtering and linking, in particular by creating tables of contents according to predefined categories, determining the surfing behavior of users and creating a tailor-made surfing proposal, offering help etc, YouTube leaves on the role of a neutral intermediary and therefore cannot claim the host provider privilege,” the court wrote. YouTube disagreed with the ruling and appealed the matter at the Higher Regional Court of Vienna. The video service maintained that, as a neutral hosting provider, it’s protected under the safe harbor provisions of the Austrian E-Commerce Act. After a careful review of the case, the Higher Regional Court of Vienna agreed with YouTube, overturning the previous order. According to the appeal court, YouTube doesn’t have an “active role” and is therefore shielded from liability through its safe harbor defense. The Court doesn’t dispute that YouTube provides search, categorization, and advertising services. However, these are seen as part of the normal business model of hosting platforms, which do not make the company liable. “If it had to forgo structuring and search options in order to avoid a damaging ‘appropriation’ of video content, its video platform would lose all user-friendliness,” the Court writes in its decision. “The less users are able to find videos of interest to them amid the vast multitude of uploaded videos (several hundred million in this case), the less it would make sense even to visit such a video platform,” it adds. Puls 4 cited the GS Media/Sanoma case, where the European Court of Justice ruled that posting infringing hyperlinks, during the course of business, can lead to liability. However, that doesn’t apply in this case, the Court notes, as YouTube wasn’t aware of the infringing nature of the videos. In summary, the Higher Regional Court of Vienna concludes that, as a hosting platform, YouTube benefits from the safe harbor privilege. This means that it’s not liable for uploads of users and Puls 4’s complaint is dismissed as a result. The outcome is good news for YouTube, as the order from the lower court severely threatened the operation of the video platform. However, it is not the end of the road yet. Higher Regional Court of Vienna allows the case to be appealed at the Supreme Court and Puls 4 informs TorrentFreak that it will use this opportunity. Puls 4 stresses that the current decision does not take into account relevant decisions of the CJEU, including the case regarding the infringing nature of The Pirate Bay. Nor does it reference the recent developments regarding liability under the proposed Article 13 of the EU copyright directive. “Puls4 will therefore definitely file an appeal to the Supreme Court,” a company spokesperson informs TorrentFreak. A German court referred various copyright infringement related questions to the European Court of Justice a few months ago. Since this involves YouTube directly, the Austrian Supreme Court will likely consider the pending outcome in this case too. Source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheEmpathicEar Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 [I posted this as TF too] YouTube == God == "get away with anything you want to get away with" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reefa Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 I actually think this is really good news.. Two alternatives to youtube... http:// https://www.bitchute.com/ https://bit.tube/dashboard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mincemeat Posted March 14, 2019 Share Posted March 14, 2019 Here is how I see it, and this is regardless of how I feel about youtube themselves: If youtube is to be held responsible for infringing videos, then all ISP's must be held responsible for pirates, those who build the roads must be held responsible for car crashes, airlines must be held responsible for people getting drunk on planes and so on. NOTE: I do NOT believe this should be the case! The truth is that people no longer want to be responsible for their own actions, and that shows a despicable laziness and lack of accountability that has grown up over the last decade or so. It was bad before and it is terrible now and it seems it is going to get much worse before the inevitable backlash hits. What will eventually happen is that the suppliers of storage, communications and so on will charge for their services, and that means consumers will have to pay for what they now DEMAND for free. Who loses out then? The suppliers? Nope! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oasis Posted March 14, 2019 Share Posted March 14, 2019 Good news indeed, The copyright holders shouldn't blame the platform just because they can't go after each and every individual who upload the videos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nezzi Posted March 14, 2019 Share Posted March 14, 2019 humm interesting so youtube can not held responsible for infringing videos. But Kim Dotcom is held responsible for file uplode ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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