Petition to allow legal recording of YouTube content grows

Nearly 1.1 million people have signed a petition lobbying YouTube to allow third party recording of its videos for personal/private use. The petition (which can be found here) was organised by Philip Matesanz from Hanover, Germany. He worked with the organisation change.org in order to help secure publicity for the petition which he hopes will change the way YouTube works.

The petition is aimed at five particular people/groups:

• General Counsel, Google (Arnd Haller)
• Associate Product Counsel, YouTube LLC(Harris Cohen)
• CEO, YouTube (Salar Kamangar)
• Minister of Consumer Protection (Ilse Aigner)
• European Comission (Neelie Kroes)

Currently the number of signatures on the petition has just surpassed 1,120,000 meaning 380,000 more signatures are required to reach the first target. The petition is written in English, French, German and Turkish.

The rhetoric behind the petition is one of disdain towards Google’s actions with regards to YouTube. They strongly dislike the way Google has teamed up with the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) to take action against any service that allows users to record content uploaded to YouTube.

Those sites who are under target from this RIAA-influenced purge include sites like video2mp3 and youtube2mp3 that allow YouTube videos to be recorded into viewable or audible formats.

“In the past people have been able to record TV shows and CDs using home recording equipment,” said Matesanz. “Now, Youtube wants to block users doing the same from its site. I launched this petition to make the point that changing technology should not affect peoples’ rights as a consumer. I have been amazed at the response to my petition but surprised that the company has not responded. I would very much like to sit down with them and discuss this issue.”

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