CIAM supports the actions of German creators against YouTube and Google

18/01/2010

CISAC

CIAM (International Council of Creators of Music of CISAC) has been informed that there will be an action brought against YouTube LLC., Google Inc. and Google Germany GmbH in Germany before the district court of civil law in Hamburg (308 O 27/09) for professional violations of authors’ rights/ copyrights and moral rights.  In addition, several authors and artists (Frank Peterson, Sarah Brightman, Toni Cottura, Jonathan Cafferty etc.) and independent music publishers and labels have brought a charge before the public prosecutor’s office in Hamburg ( Az. 7450 JS 228/09) against the Directors of YouTube and Google for the permanent violations on a commercial basis of authors’ rights / copyrights, moral rights and performance/master rights of the plaintiffs.

The rights holders are complaining that even in spite of rightholders’ specific “take down” demands, YouTube and Google have not taken any action to remove the illegal content and continue to disseminate illegal bootlegs of music concerts and illegal copies of music videos as so-called “user-generated content”, totally unimpressed by the complete and concrete knowledge of the violations of authors’ rights.  YouTube disregards the moral rights of the authors and artists and does not pay any or at least any appropriate remuneration to the rights holders, although Google would earn billions from advertisement through the marketing of YouTube and its illegal music supply.

CIAM (International Council of Creators of Music of CISAC) expressly welcomes and supports these actions by authors in Germany, in order to clarify to what extent in particular the moral rights of music authors have been permanently damaged by the defendants and furthermore whether the responsible parties of YouTube and Google can be personally called to account for illegal distribution of music on an unprecedented scale.