YouTube's first Spanish lawsuit

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Mediaset-backed Spanish TV network Telecinco is reportedly suing Google’s YouTube for having videos of its content without the broadcaster’s authorisation.

These videos are uploaded by the general users and it seems YouTube is finding it hard to filter them.

The first big problem for Telecinco was a year ago when somebody uploaded on YouTube a clip from a premiere of famous TV series Los Serrano even before this was premiered. Telecinco does not like this because it goes against the channel’s traditional TV business model as well as the channel’s new online TV service MiTele.

Paolo Vasile, Telecinco's CEO, criticized YouTube's policy because "it is not a pirate enterprise it's a very well known company with stocks in the stock exchange and with these actions it is hurting the culture very much."

Since it launched in February 2005 YouTube has grown rapidily and now the service has an average of 75 million videos seen per month. This constitues a threat for a lot of audiovisual companies. So some of them have come to agreements with YouTube, including Spanish broadcasters Antena 3 TV and Cuatro.

But elsewhere, problems remain for YouTube. The company is currently also being sued by Viacom's MTV music channel.


Source: Rapid TV News