Today's decision is most regrettable. The court has obviously followed YouTube's argumentation that it is only the uploaders who are responsible for the contents that are retrievable via the service", comments Dr Tobias Holzmüller, General Counsel at GEMA, on the decision: "We consider this to be wrong. Furthermore, the decision is not justified from an economic perspective, as it continues to enable YouTube to generate high advertising revenues without passing them on to musical authors."
The background to the legal dispute is GEMA's demand for an adequate payment to musical authors for the use of their repertoire protected by copyright via YouTube's platform. YouTube has not paid GEMA any licence fees for the use of music on its video platform to date, even though it generates substantial advertising revenues with the music.
Thomas Theune, Director of Broadcasting and Online at GEMA, adds: "In our opinion, YouTube exploits works retrievable via the service. This type of exploitation is subject to licence fee payments. YouTube is not only a technical service provider, it actually conducts itself like a music service. As a consequence, YouTube should, just like a music service, obtain licences and not pass the responsibility on to the uploaders".
The OLG decision is not yet legally binding. The right to appeal was expressly granted. Holzmüller explains the next steps as follows: "We shall study the reasons for the decision and then probably launch an appeal".
"The unfair allocation of value created in the digital economy has been a problem for authors for many years. Creative content has led to substantial income being generated in the online sector."
"To date, it has been mainly platform operators such as YouTube that have gained an economic benefit by shirking their responsibilities to pay authors adequately, referring to their privileged position as to liability. It is thus time that authors finally get their fair share of the value created in the digital economy.
Today's decision is most regrettable. The court has obviously followed YouTube's argumentation that it is only the uploaders who are responsible for the contents that are retrievable via the service", comments Dr Tobias Holzmüller, General Counsel at GEMA, on the decision: "We consider this to be wrong. Furthermore, the decision is not justified from an economic perspective, as it continues to enable YouTube to generate high advertising revenues without passing them on to musical authors."The background to the legal dispute is GEMA's demand for an adequate payment to musical authors for the use of their repertoire protected by copyright via YouTube's platform. YouTube has not paid GEMA any licence fees for the use of music on its video platform to date, even though it generates substantial advertising revenues with the music.Thomas Theune, Director of Broadcasting and Online at GEMA, adds: "In our opinion, YouTube exploits works retrievable via the service. This type of exploitation is subject to licence fee payments. YouTube is not only a technical service provider, it actually conducts itself like a music service. As a consequence, YouTube should, just like a music service, obtain licences and not pass the responsibility on to the uploaders".The OLG decision is not yet legally binding. The right to appeal was expressly granted. Holzmüller explains the next steps as follows: "We shall study the reasons for the decision and then probably launch an appeal"."The unfair allocation of value created in the digital economy has been a problem for authors for many years. Creative content has led to substantial income being generated in the online sector." "To date, it has been mainly platform operators such as YouTube that have gained an economic benefit by shirking their responsibilities to pay authors adequately, referring to their privileged position as to liability. It is thus time that authors finally get their fair share of the value created in the digital economy.
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