Yes, you read that right: ‘BPI boss praises YouTube’ is not a sentence that we get to write too often in our news coverage.
However, the British industry body has been taking part in roundtable discussions, alongside other creative and sports industry bodies, with YouTube, Facebook and Twitter since 2018 – talks brokered by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office.
Today, the body is reporting progress, with a list of new policies and improvements made by two of the three tech companies. They cover everything from helping rightsholders “more quickly remove infringing links at scale” to educational content on piracy.
“There remains much work to do to reduce online infringement, which continues to hinder the growth of the UK’s world-beating creative industries, but I would like to thank Facebook and YouTube for their positive engagement and their efforts to address many of the issues brought forward in the Roundtable,” said BPI boss Geoff Taylor.
Note that we said ‘two of the three tech firms’ though.
“Today’s announcement represents a staging post, rather than the conclusion of that process. However, the fact that in contrast, no significant progress has been made with Twitter underlines the urgent need for Government to ensure that all online platforms take a responsible approach to dealing with content…”