Google wins battle in France

TF1 the number 1 television channel in Europe has declared war against Google.

The French broadcast group went to court against the popular search engine, and more precisely against YouTube , the video streaming website owned by Google since 2006.

TF1 was outraged to see copyrighted movies and tv shows being posted without approval on YouTube and sought damages up to 141 milion euros ( 175$ milion)

The whole business backfired when the court found Google not to be liable for pirated content on YouTube and TF1 was ordered to pay 80,000 euros as legal fees.

Although the rules are pretty strict regarding copyright infringement with videos uploaded to YouTube, Google can not act as a police force with users content. In fact the only ones that can be held liable for video-sharing of pirated content are the users alone. 

YouTube can only be held accountable if it refuses to take down the ilegal material after the rightful owner reports it, which sometimes may seem easier said than done. 

Just imagine that in order to be sure his content is not being pirated, the owner of the material should be constantly checking uploaded videos on YouTube. YouTube had his share of problems back home as well, since from 2007 the internet company has been fighting with Viacom.

Could this slowly lead to the fall of YouTube. All we know is that "youtubers" are a fast growing comunity and filtrating their content becomes harder and harder to conceive with each new member.

It may seem like scourge mainly for artists who find it very hard to sell their work when everybody can just get it free on youtube, but when we look at the past years we'll see that a lot of fresh singers and performers gained their fame and fortune by first singing in front of their webcam.