Europe News

YouTube loses case in German court over Brightman songs

Sep 3, 2010, 17:57 GMT

Hamburg - YouTube lost a case in a German court Friday, with a judge prohibiting any online distribution by the Google subsidiary of copyright recordings by English soprano Sarah Brightman.

The state court in Hamburg also entered a finding of damages. It ordered YouTube to disclose how many times three Brightman recordings had been played by users of the website so as to calculate the amount.

Google said it would appeal.

Brightman achieved fame with roles in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats and scored a big seller with her 1996 duo with Andrea Bocelli, Time to Say Goodbye. The case was brought in Germany by her producer, Frank Peterson.

A court spokeswoman said: 'The court concluded that YouTube was treating content uploaded by its users as its own. That leads to a more strenuous duty to check out the content. The court came to the conclusion YouTube did not fulfil this.'

YouTube has repeatedly said any artist or copyright owner can check the portal and have illegal content removed on request.