German Composer The Latest To Mistakenly Sue Google Over The Actions Of Others

from the who-knew-assigning-liability-was-so-confusing dept

The one good part of the DMCA are the safe harbors that help people recognize that you should be suing the party that actually did something wrong, rather than the company that made the tools they used. Unfortunately, even with these protections some people still sue the tools/service provider in the middle. Outside the US, it's even more complicated -- without the safe harbor provision, common sense seems to go out the window and you get people suing the service provider for no good reason, except perhaps jealousy. The latest such case involves German composer Frank Peterson, who is suing Google because others uploaded some of his music to YouTube. And, rather than come up with a way to capitalize on it, like so many others, he feels the need to sue. He's claiming millions in "damages" though he wants to force Google to open its books so he can determine the full extent of these imaginary damages. The article also quotes another publisher who makes this odd statement:

Some producers requested to make cover versions of our songs, but refrained to do so after realizing how many videos of the songs already existed for free on YouTube.

Really? It's difficult to believe this is true. The fact that there were videos of a particular song on YouTube would make others not want to cover that song? By what logic?

Filed Under: copyright, frank peterson, germany, infringement, safe harbors
Companies: google, youtube