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Google Inc., YouTube LLC: Allow third party recording tools for YouTube

For decades people were allowed to take a private copy of a public broadcast. You could record the radio program with a cassette recorder or make a copy of your favorite movie by using a video recorder. All these techniques have been opposed heavily in its early years by the big media companies who didn't want the public to have such technology. They did describe such technology as criminal and as a threat to their business e.g. the 1980s campaign Home Taping Is Killing Music.

Several years later history is about to repeat: Google has teamed up with the RIAA to make the same claims against all sorts of online recording tools for their 21th century broadcasting service: YouTube ("Broadcast yourself"). Google is taking action against nearly every service that enables its users to create a private copy of a public YouTube broadcast while the RIAA is threatening news media like CNet for promoting such a software.

I hereby ask Google to break their silence and participate in an open and fair discussion with the intention to find a solution that suits the needs of the users. I am also asking Ilse Aigner - the German minister of consumer protection - to arrange a meeting with Google where she will represent all Germans and their right to take a private copy. This petition is also directed towards Neelie Kroes who is responsible for the Digital Agenda at the European Comission: I am asking her to make sure that european consumers continue to have the same rights in Online-Broadcasting they have in Offline-Broadcasting.