Spanish commercial broadcaster TeleCino has launched a legal challenge against YouTube, claiming the video sharing website is violating its intellectual property rights.
TeleCinco, controlled by the Italian broadcasting group Mediaset, has filed a lawsuit in the Spanish courts claiming that YouTube has failed to take “effective measures” to prevent clips from its programming appearing on its site.
Secretary general Mario Rodriguez told a Madrid news conference that YouTube was damaging the channel by broadcasting clips of programmes to which TeleCinco held the rights before the broadcaster had broadcast them itself.
Broadcasters have taken widely different approaches to the challenge presented by YouTube. Last year Viacom began a $1 billion suit against YouTube claiming copyright infringement. But the BBC has taken the opposite approach, opening its own ‘channels’ and offering new and classic clips on the YouTube site.