YouTube Germany Causes Legal Problems

A few days ago, the online video sharing service YouTube released numerous versions of the product to be accessed from other countries than the US. Among the lucky nations that received their own YouTube, we can mention Brazil, France, Italy, Japan and Germany. This latest one caused some legal problems to the parent company Google because the search giant didn't agree with the copyright organization GEMA on the fees concerning the copyright-protected clips that are uploaded on YouTube.

According to The Reporter, the online video sharing service must pay a compensation for every copyright-protected clip uploaded on the page. However, they didn't agree so the availability of the YouTube German service is currently in question.

"GEMA lawyer Kerstin Becker said the issue at stake is not only future revenue but also compensation for past copyright violations by German users of YouTube's U.S. site. A German Google spokesman would confirm only that the company was in negotiations with "various partners" concerning its German launch. He added that Google hoped Germany will be among a "second wave" of local-language sites expected in the coming months," The Reporter mentioned.

Every time the Mountain View company released local versions of its products, it encountered legal problems with the country's organizations. Take for example Gmail, the mail solution owned by Google that was recently made available for free for all the users. Because another organization was already the owner of Gmail.pl, the Polish domain of Gmail, Google wasn't able to create a separate domain for the mail solution in this country.

After several days of talks, the two companies didn't reach an agreement and decided to proceed to the court and let the judge choose the owner of the domain. However, it's hard to believe that Google will win the lawsuit because the Polish owners of the domain registered it a long time before the expansion of the mail solution.