What responsibilities do digital service providers have towards copyright holders? Can an internet provider be required to block access to a website on which movies are made available without the consent of the film industry?
Case C-314/12 UPC Telekabel Wien v Constantin Film Verleih & Wega Filmproduktionsgesellschaft, which is currently pending before the Court of Justice of the EU, gives a clear illustration of the problem. The case concerns the access to a website on which more than 130,000 (!) movies were made available for streaming and downloading without permission of copyright holders. The owners of the website, which was taken offline after criminal investigation, were prosecuted in Germany. The present case regards the legal responsibility of an internet service provider whose services allowed Austrian users to access the illegal website. The question at issue is whether the internet provider, who had no (contractual) relation at all to the makers of the website, was under a legal duty to prohibit users from accessing the website.
In a nuanced Opinion in this case, Advocate General Cruz Villalón submits that it is not compatible with EU law to impose a general prohibition on an internet provider to allow its users to view a website that violates copyright law, without giving any specific guidance as to concrete measures that should be taken so as to prevent access to the site. According to the AG, moreover, this is not different in case a provider may avoid sanctions by demonstrating to have taken all reasonable measures to uphold the prohibition.
Still, in AG Cruz's opinion, a national measure specifically requiring a certain provider to block access to a designated website is not as a matter of principle disproportionate for the sole fact that it requires the service provider to incur not inconsiderable costs, while users may easily circumvent the technical measures taken by the service provider. It remains the task of national judges to strike the delicate balance of parties' rights in specific cases.
The AG bases his conclusions on the balancing of fundamental rights within the ambit of what is 'fair and equitable' and 'proportionate' in the sense of Article 3 of Directive 2004/48 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. The balance involves the right to protection of intellectual property (Article 17(2) of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights) and, on the service provider's side, freedom of information (Article 11 of the Charter) and freedom to conduct a business (Article 16 of the Charter). As AG Cruz points out, imposing a general obligation de résultat on the service provider to prevent access to websites that violate copyright law does not reflect a fair balance of these rights. Giving a service provider the possibility to avoid sanctions by showing to have taken all reasonable measures does not restore the balance, as it pushes back the consideration of relevant fundamental rights argumentation to the second stage of the assessment. Moreover, while a copyright holder has strong claims in hand, a digital service provider who is not infringing copyright himself would hardly have any defence against the imposition of a burdensome general measure aimed at preventing the abuse of intellectual property rights by third parties to which the provider has no contractual relationship.
In sum, the complex task of balancing the interests and rights involved in cases of massive copyright infringements through the internet would remain a task of national judges in specific cases.
See also the CJEU's press release (which, interestingly, leaves out most of these nuances of its heading).
See also the CJEU's press release (which, interestingly, leaves out most of these nuances of its heading).
