a billion dollar trial

More than the lawyer of Pharrell Williams, it is the Global Music Rights, a company which brings together 42 musical authors who today asks YouTube to remove 20,000 pieces of music from its platform otherwise the case will continue before the law courts.

YouTube-music Some artists are therefore ganging up against YouTube on the eve of the launch of the new paid service (Music Key) from Google.

The complaint starts from a simple observation according to Irving Azoff, the creator of GMR: artists are less and less paid simply because their titles are found on platforms like YouTube which do not allow to generate as much profit than selling records. The recording industry would thus suffer a lot from the digital transition without having found the ideal recipe to satisfy both the public and the artists.

If all that is a question of appreciation, the facts are on the side of the GRM: for each broadcasting service, it is necessary to obtain the permission of the copyright holders. However, it would be 20,000 titles managed by the company which would be currently broadcast by YouTube illegally. Irving Azoff declares that he would be able to claim $ 150,000 in damages for each video published on the platform without any authorization, for a total of $ 3 billion.

On the YouTube side, the defense is organized around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a procedure that allows the copyright holder to report publications for removal. This procedure involves the precise identification of the files or content to be blocked, here URL addresses. the GRM should list each video one by one, which it apparently did not do.

The cumbersome process is increasingly criticized by songwriters, who point to the looting of copyrights by big companies like Google. In addition, the very existence of the DMCA takes the problem upside down: it is no longer necessary for broadcast platforms to obtain agreements, but it is up to the rights holders to hunt for broadcast content to request it. withdrawal…

Given the current tensions between the two companies, the case is likely to go to trial. It will then be up to the judges in charge of the case to decide.