Germany Thinks YouTube is Omniscient
Here's how stupid copyright battles have gotten:
"YouTube must take measures to prevent violations in future," said GEMA's lawyer Kerstin Baecker. "The court has clearly rejected the argument that YouTube as a host is not responsible for users' content."
That sounds reasonable until you sit back and consider reality: how can any company possibly install filters that are aware of all copyrighted material - especially given the fact that new material is being created all the time, and the backlog of extant material is so large as to be effectively infinite. It's simply not possible to do what is being asked here.
If this kind of thing holds up, then no site that accepts user generated content - Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, blog servers (etc. etc) can safely operate. Ultimately, this makes it very clear as to what the content industry wants to see happen: they want the net reduced back to a broadcast only thing, akin to TV and radio.
