Foto: Profimedia.cz

YouTube will now pay songwriters, composers and music publishers for hosting copyrighted musical pieces.

The Czech version of YouTube was launched almost exactly a year ago and until now was faced with an unresolved issue regarding authors’ rights to the music used on its hosted videos. Due to a recently signed agreement between the company and OSA there is no longer a threat of videos being pulled off the site and authors and composers will be compensated for the use of their music. Furthermore, the agreement is retroactive, so YouTube will have to pay for all its content dating from October 2008.

“An author has a right to say yes or no when it comes to the use of his piece. OSA represents around one million authors of musical pieces from all over the world. Through the agreement with OSA, Google [YouTube’s owner] has obtained the right to use the musical pieces of these authors through the YouTube.cz service,” said Roman Strejček, chairman of the board of OSA.

Communication manager for Google Czech Republic Janka Zichová said that YouTube has thousands of partnerships throughout the world with the organizations like OSA here in the Czech Republic as well as with music production studios and composers. “We provide authors with the possibility to use YouTube for distribution and monetarization of their created content and make a profit on it. We were in contact with OSA before the official start of Czech YouTube in October 2008 and since that time we have been working on a mutual agreement that would suit both sides satisfactorily. This agreement, however, took some time to be completed due to YouTube’s complexity as well as the complexity of the content on it that is represented by OSA. For us, this agreement is groundbreaking because of YouTube’s position as the biggest video server in the Czech Republic, and it was essential to connect with a local organization which represents a wide list of authors’ content,” Zichová said.

Payment plan

All payment goes to Google, owner of YouTube. “Once the agreement is in effect, Google will provide data to OSA, which OSA will use to calculate the copyright fees for both local and foreign copyright holders of the pieces streamed in the area of the Czech Republic. The money will be paid to authors by OSA from the payments made to Google. The exact amount will be paid, as in the case of other licenses, based on the combination of author’s reward and amount of reported data,” Zichová said. Authors can also use YouTube’s Content ID System to help them to identify their content.

Neither Youtube nor OSA has indicated that they think this agreement will interfere with the YouTube content numbers. According to information from Google, 20 hours of video is added every minute to the site. “I seriously don’t think that there will be any shortage of YouTube content. As mentioned before, there should be no effect of the agreement on the uses themselves,” Strejček said.

Copyright minefield

Even if it looks like an agreement of this kind is easy to conclude, this is very far from the truth. The model still has not been adopted in some countries and the respect for copyrights still leaves a lot to be desired. “I can say from practice that in the end there is a synergy of businesses, or more likely, license models. However, agreements are usually confidential and are not published so it’s only a guess from my side in this particular case. To illustrate this, recently there was a refusal for such an agreement in Germany and the UK, so the content was forced out of the localized YouTube services,” Strejček said.

Authors’ rights are a hot question all over the world and the pressure to resolve the issue is growing, especially in countries where this tradition is not as strongly developed. Google’s agreement in the UK with the country’s Performing Right Society is another recent example of resolving the issue of local content rights.

In Germany, on the other hand, Google and YouTube are facing recent opposition from the International Council of Creators of Music (CIAM). A claim of commercial breach of copyright has been filed at the district court of civil law in Hamburg. The lawsuit was originally filed by German composer Frank Peterson in April. Other claimants in the case include British soprano Sarah Brightman and a number of German music producers.

“With the development of the Internet there is also a development in defending authors’ rights. From the right holder’s point of view it is necessary to know the principles and laws of newly developed services. In this case, it is not important if the use of the Internet is comparable to the use of other distribution channels such as TV or radio. It is a question of principle to respect authors’ rights and to respect copyrights. … It is our goal that our authors’ pieces will be used in the maximum possible [number of] cases. It is only necessary to find a healthy compromise between the author’s demands and the service providers. We are therefore trying to get familiar with various levels of knowledge of new Internet services,” Strejček said.