Ben Reid
26 Oct 2006 15:14
Google Inc., one of the world's wealthiest companies and new $1.65 billion owners of video sharing phenomenon YouTube.com, has outlined its stance on copyright issues, with Google Europe's Vice President Nikesh Arora stating that the software innovator will "not tolerate copyright violations," once acquisition proceedings are fully complete.
The video-sharing website's rapid growth has been largely down to the thousands upon thousands of copyrighted videos uploaded by users and many believed that Google had aquired a bundle of legal trouble when it made the takeover in September.
It is policy to remove content by request of copyright owners - its recent takedown of 30,000 videos owned by Japanese media companies was a sign of intent. However some believe that the company should introduce a filtering technology to weed out copyrighted content - which is said to have been developed by Google, but not yet implemented.
Mr Arora said of the situation, "There is not a lot we can say about what we will do with YouTube because it is still in the process of due diligence and we haven't closed the acquisition.
"We intend to uphold copyright. We believe it is very important as part the creative process. It's evident from our policy as part of Google Video, Google News or Google Books, and any acquisition in the future is not going to change Google's view on copyright."
Source:
BBC