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The fight between YouTube and the Italian TV company Mediaset on Internet liability principles continues! The Spanish court of Appeal held that YouTube is a mere hosting provider rather than a content provider and therefore not liable for the publication by its users of videos infringing the copyrights of Telecinco, the Spanish harm of the Italian TV company Mediaset. But this battle follows an interim proceeding with a different outcome in Italy.
In a nutshell, Telecinco had alleged that Youtube was liable for the videos published by their users infringing Telecinco’s copyright. But the court held that since YouTube is a hosting provider the liability exemption and the lack of a monitoring obligation on the activity of its users provided by the EU E-Commerce Directive were applicable to the company. Based on such interpretation YouTube was NOT liable to the infringing material published by its users and also the claims for damages alleged by Telecinco have been dismissed.
This is an interesting decision that provides a view on the matter quite different from the one adopted by the Court of Rome (Italy) on the same topic in a dispute between YouTube and R.T.I. (the Italian harm of the same Mediaset group). In that circumstance the court of Rome held that the applicable laws and case laws:
This is an interesting decision that provides a view on the matter quite different from the one adopted by the Court of Rome (Italy) on the same topic in a dispute between YouTube and R.T.I. (the Italian harm of the same Mediaset group). In that circumstance the court of Rome held that the applicable laws and case laws:
“make a provider liable when it does not merely provide a connection to the Internet, but offer additional services (e.g. caching, hosting) and/or performs checks of the information and especially when either it is aware of suspicious material and does not check its unlawfulness and removes it or it is aware of its unlawfulness and does not act“.
The decision of the court of Rome was part of an interim proceeding that shall be now assessed in the merits, but was followed by another decision along the same lines in 2011 involving Italian On Line and Mediaset again. We shall also see whether the recently introduced enforcement procedure for copyright breaches occurring on the Internet will have an effect on the approach to be taken by courts on such cases. Additionally, following the coming into force of such new enforcement procedure I wonder whether such cases will increase just because of the summary judgements to be taken by the Italian Communications Authority that might trigger follow-up disputes.
I will follow the developments on the matter, but feel free to contact me, Giulio Coraggio (giulio.coraggio@gmail.com). And follow me on Twitter, Google+ and become one of my friends on LinkedIn.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Rego Korosi
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