YouTube has won a copyright infringement case brought by Spanish television broadcaster Telecinco, Spain's largest commercial station.

Telecinco had accused YouTube of violating its intellectual property rights by broadcasting images that the TV station owned.

"YouTube is not a supplier of content and therefore has no obligation to control ex-ante the illegality" the Madrid court said in its ruling.

“Its only obligation is to cooperate with the holders of the rights in order to immediately withdraw the content once the infraction is identified."

Google, which owns YouTube called the ruling “a clear victory for the Internet and the rules that govern it,” on its European Public Policy Blog.

“More than 24 hours of video are loaded onto YouTube every minute. If Internet sites had to screen all videos, photos and text before allowing them on a website, many popular sites – not just YouTube, but Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others – would grind to a halt,” Google said.

Google said YouTube respects copyright laws and wants artists, publishers and media companies to succeed online. It said it hopes to work with Telecinco in the future in the “in the spirit of copyright protection, content distribution and new opportunities.”