A German court has ruled that YouTube is not required to monitor user uploads for possible copyright infringements, in a case that's been under review for years.
YouTube and GEMA (Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte, or Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights) have a history of lawsuits together, just like an old couple that can't get along, but they can't live without each other either.
In their recent dispute, the German agency sued YouTube in an attempt to get the Google-owned company to police the content users upload to its site, and prevent copyrighted material from being put online.
The German lower courts ruled in favor of YouTube back in 2012, but GEMA appealed, and now three years later, the German Court of Appeals in Hamburg has ruled in YouTube's favor once again.
What this means is that YouTube won't have to implement any kind of data sniffing or content moderation system for its upload procedures, and remains to work in the same way it does today.
But the court doesn't let YouTube completely off the hook either. The Web's biggest video sharing portal has received a warning as well, in which the court has instructed Google that, when a copyright infringement is reported, the company also needs to take steps to prevent future situations of the same kind, not only remove the respective content and punish the offending user.
It's unclear how YouTube's management will follow this advice and how this will change the current policy, but this is a clear shot across the bow, if you ever saw one.
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