AfterDawn: News

YouTube sued by Italian broadcaster

Following the growing trend, the large Italian broadcaster Mediaset has announced a new lawsuit against Google and its video sharing site YouTube claiming the site illegally used its material. The broadcaster is asking for damages of 500 million euros.

Mediaset, controlled by Italian Prime Minister Silvio joins other broadcasters in claims that YouTube is infringing their copyrights.



YouTube however, did not see the need for the suit. "YouTube respects copyright holders and takes copyright issues very seriously," a spokesperson added.

"There is no need for legal action ... We prohibit users from uploading infringing material and we cooperate with all copyright holders to identify and promptly remove infringing content as soon as we are officially notified."

For its case, Mediaset added a "sample analysis" that claims that as of June 10th, "at least 4,643 videos and clips owned by us, equivalent to more than 325 hours of transmission without having rights". The broadcaster also noted that those videos equal to "the loss of 315,672 days of broadcasting by its three TV channels."

YouTube is already facing a 100 million euro infringement suit from the French broadcaster TF1 and a $1 billion USD infringement suit from US media group Viacom.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 31 Jul 2008 16:14

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• 14 comments

• DSWarrior

  When will the guys from YouTube learn?...Yet another useless lawsuit...sigh...
  
  Just turn down the site, and that's that...

  31.7.2008 16:30 #1

• tripp

  wow, these people are idiots. instead of monetizing, they sue

  31.7.2008 16:40 #2

• defgod

  Will these idiot broadcasters ever stop? People will record and upload whatever they want. To any site of their choosing. These sites can't begin to manage every uploaded file from around the world. The time and money that would go into researching every uploaded video for infringing content would be astronomical. Individuals don't care about the "This broadcast is the property of yada yada yada" crap. We don't worry about that kind of thing. Granted that anyone that has uploaded to any such site. Is potentially putting that site in jeopardy of being sued. The biggest issue is the fact that we as individuals will do what we want with digital recordings/files. No matter the nationality or country of origin. This will only grow with the growing ability to record things digitally around the world.
  
  edit spelling

  31.7.2008 17:02 #3

• tripplite

  ha HA!! Mediaset weren't you having financial issues a while back????
  
  they know perfectly well that youtube increase there sales, its free advertisement:D
  
  but the enemy of my enemy is my ally!!!
  
  
  -tripplite

  31.7.2008 17:17 #4

• Rudeboi

  Holy crap.
  1 Billion & 500 million & 100 million?!
  
  That's a whole lot of money.
  
  I don't see how it's Youtube's fault, it's the users who put up the videos.

  31.7.2008 22:24 #5

• Hyasuma

  oh hell, everything is uploaded in youtube, i mean come on, every MTV, tv shows, cartoons, comedy central, travel channel, discovery channel, i mean what do they want? do they want every video that is uploaded to be SELF recorded??? I mean that is just stupid they pull this kind of trick on youtube. I mean hell, i upload my asian mtv and short movie clips all the time, does that mean my country going to sue youtube? for crying out loud, these things are suppose to be shared through out the world so people know what they like and either purchase them if they like them, i mean, come on, is not like you can download from youtube -_-; this is just stupid

  1.8.2008 00:30 #6

• psplvanub

  Actually, you can!

  1.8.2008 05:55 #7

• c1c

  how 2 download from you tube?

  1.8.2008 09:48 #8

• emugamer

  Originally posted by c1c: how 2 download from you tube?There's a Firefox plugin. Can't think if it right now. But that should point you in the right direction :)

  1.8.2008 12:24 #9

• tripplite

  Quote:Actually, you can!
  yes you can download videos from any streaming source
  
  http://keepvid.com/
  
  thats an easy solution, however your not downloading from youtube, youtube isn't hosting the media for download.....your just capturing
  
  -tripplite
  
  

  
  

  1.8.2008 14:04 #10

• emugamer

  Originally posted by tripplite: Quote:Actually, you can!
  yes you can download videos from any streaming source
  
  http://keepvid.com/
  
  thats an easy solution, however your not downloading from youtube, youtube isn't hosting the media for download.....your just capturing
  
  -trippliteThe way I was thinking was downloading the flv file using the firefox plugin (at least that's the way I used to do it). I then played it straight using MPC, or sometimes converted it quickly to any other video format using Total Video Converter. Can't remember the name of the plugin right now. Is that considered downloading it directly from the Youtube server?

  1.8.2008 14:56 #11

• matt876

  I've seen some cases where company's actually like it when individuals upload there content to youtube, Really its not youtubes problem to police what people upload, The courts shouldn't entertain such lawsuits, it only encourages these company's to sue over nothing. I'm not saying that people are not entitled to something for there work but in all honesty isn't uploading it the same as broadcasting it over tv and downloading it like somebody recording it on a vcr or dvd burner? and the thing is like the youtube spokesperson said youtube is one of the strictest video sharing websites i know of, I'm sure they would have taken the content down. This is just as rediclious as music labels sueing for millions of dollers in damages over a song that costs $0.99, There really needs to be a stachue of limitations on sueing, its getting rediclious now in days and frankly im getting tired of hearing about it.

  3.8.2008 01:38 #12

• atomicxl

  I disagree with everyone saying its not YouTube's fault. YouTube makes money from ads that are on the pages. When copyrighted content is up there and getting plays, YouTube makes money off of that and give 0% to the owners of that content.
  
  Thats the issue. YouTube seems to think that its ok for them to make money off the content, but its evil for creators to make money from their content. If YouTube was an ad free site basically ran from the goodness of someone's heart, maybe i'd feel bad for them... but they aren't.
  
  But its funny, i'm sure everyone feels bad for YouTube... yet the users have an "F you, i'm not getting sued" attitude and continue to violate YouTube's policies which continues to get them sued.

  3.8.2008 20:30 #13

• DJMikiRia

  Originally posted by Hyasuma: oh hell, everything is uploaded in youtube, i mean come on, every MTV, tv shows, cartoons, comedy central, travel channel, discovery channel, i mean what do they want? do they want every video that is uploaded to be SELF recorded??? I mean that is just stupid they pull this kind of trick on youtube. I mean hell, i upload my asian mtv and short movie clips all the time, does that mean my country going to sue youtube? for crying out loud, these things are suppose to be shared through out the world so people know what they like and either purchase them if they like them, i mean, come on, is not like you can download from youtube -_-; this is just stupid http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/ yes you can download them, but they cant ever be the quality of a purchased video. BTW, youtube videos are in FLV. As good as flash is, it still is very far from the quality you can purchase.
  

  19.4.2010 21:27 #14