Google and the companies that it owns have been having a very rough time in Germany lately where Motorola Mobility (and by extension Google) is under investigation for patent abuse and a couple of other anti-trust items. The case, which was brought to court by a German equivalent to the RIAA called GEMA, centered on 12 music videos which were uploaded by users. GEMA stated that no royalties were paid for the videos and asked for YouTube to pay. YouTube responded by stating that they were not aware of the infringing videos and took them down.

However the courts have no ruled that it is YouTube is solely responsible for the items that their users upload (this is the scary part) and ordered them to put word-based filters to augment the existing filters designed to prevent the uploading of copyrighted material.

What this ruling has done is set a precedent. The judicial system has just interpreted the laws to make content services (and also by extension ISPs and web hosts) responsible for the content posted on them. This means that a company can now by-pass the owners or posters of the content and file suit against the company providing the service. For those of you playing the home game your ISP, Hosting Provider, and others can now be sued for what you do. This will encourage them to cooperate with content owners (and law enforcement) in order to avoid large legal bills. It also means that you might want to be prepared for higher rates as the companies in question will surely increase their prices to cover the costs of extra liability insurance (which is what covers them from suits like this).

As of this writing this only affects Germany, but we would not be surprised to see other cartels follow suit to win the same type of precedent. YouTube is expected to appeal this decision and we very much hope they are successful; the consequences are troublesome to say the least.

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