Source: https://www.mediainstitute.org/2012/06/18/host-service-provider-liability-for-user-posted-content-a-view-from-the-eu/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 01:48:24+00:00

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The Second Circuit’s April 5 decision in Viacom, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., finding YouTube covered by the DMCA host service provider safe harbor with respect to most of its hosting of repeatedly posted infringing content, now has echoes in two EU jurisdictions, in which first-instance courts in France and Germany recently reached opposite results regarding any duty on YouTube’s part to screen out repeat infringements.1 For a summary and critical discussion of the Viacom decision in “IP Issues,” see Peter S. Menell, Judicial Regulation of Digital Copyright Windfalls: Making Interpretive and Policy Sense of Viacom v. YouTube and UMG Recordings v. Shelter Capital Partners.
Although the host incurs a duty to remove access to infringing material upon becoming aware of apparent infringing activity or upon proper notification from the copyright holder, Section 512(m)(1) makes clear that the host has no initial duty to monitor, nor “affirmatively [to] seek facts indicating infringing activity”; thus, as Viacom emphasized, in general, the burden of policing UGC sites to identify infringing material, and its location on the host’s server, falls on the copyright owner.
(b) the provider, upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove or to disable access to the information….
Until the Court of Justice for the European Union authoritatively interprets “aware of facts or circumstances from which the illegal activity or information is apparent” and “general obligation to monitor” or “general obligation actively to seek facts or circumstances indicating illegal activity,” as well as the nature of the activities that characterize “host” service providers, national courts’ application of national laws implementing the Directive may lead to opposite results, as the recent French and German YouTube cases illustrate.
By the same token, the French court rejected plaintiffs’ argument that YouTube’s placement of advertisements should recast it as a “publisher”: So long as the advertisements do not determine the content, nothing prohibits a host service provider from deriving revenue from advertising. While the eCommerce Directive does not address financial benefit, the French court’s analysis is consistent with Section 512(c)(1)(B) of the U.S. Copyright Act, which disqualifies host service providers who derive a direct financial benefit; advertising not specifically directed to particular content confers too general a financial benefit to disqualify the service provider from the safe harbor.
Turning to the issue of YouTube’s knowledge of user-posted infringements, the court stressed that, given the preclusion of a general duty to monitor,3 YouTube’s knowledge of infringements would derive only from notification by the copyright owner or by a third party who alerted YouTube to the unauthorized content. In this case, the broadcasters notified YouTube of the infringing postings, which YouTube took down only five days later. The court deemed this period too long, stating that, once notified, YouTube had an obligation to block the content as soon as possible. Nonetheless, the court held that YouTube incurred no liability because, under the terms of the French Copyright Act, the rights of the television transmission entities covered the communication to the public “in return for payment of an entry fee.” Since YouTube does not charge users for access to the posted videos, the broadcasters had no claim against it, the court ruled.
Apart from the court’s surprising interpretation of “entry fee” as a limitation on broadcasters’ right of communication to the public,4 the decision is in some tension with prior decisions of the same court, which had held that a UGC service had no general or anticipatory duty to monitor, but would be deemed “aware of facts or circumstances from which the illegal activity or information is apparent” once the service had received an initial notice regarding specific content which the same or another user subsequently reposted.5 The current decision appears to elude the law’s constructive knowledge provision entirely. To that extent, it brings to mind the Viacom decision, which also may have given too little weight – or as Peter Menell has contended, “distort[ed] the statute’s plain meaning” – with respect to the identical language in Section 512(c).
By contrast, in the German action, GEMA, the German performing rights society (akin to ASCAP and BMI) succeeded in holding YouTube liable for repeat postings of content previously identified as infringing and previously blocked by YouTube, but which nonetheless reappeared in subsequent user postings. Like the French court, the Hamburg court ruled that YouTube “did not exercise any editorial control of the videos uploaded to its servers,” and that YouTube’s various “structuring services,” “solely based on automated probability calculations,” did not implicate YouTube in the content sufficiently to engage its liability. Similarly, the economic benefit from advertising was too attenuated with respect to specific infringements.
The Plaintiff is not demanding preventative control of all video clips uploaded to the platform with regard to its entire repertoire. The Plaintiff is referring to the concrete musical works in dispute regarding which it has already reported concrete infringements…. However, the Defendant is (only) required to use the content ID program after gaining knowledge of concrete rights infringement with regard to future uploads. The Defendant is not obligated to search through its entire database using the content ID program. The obligation for precautionary measures so that there are no further infringements to the extent possible applies for the future. The auditing and controlling obligations of a party against whom claims have been made as a “Störer” [contributory tortfeasor (literally, “disturber”)] do not begin until notification of a concrete rights infringement. Rights owners themselves in particular can check the inventory of videos on the Defendant’s platform. To do so, they can use the search function accessible to everyone on the platform or even use the content verification system offered by the Defendant. Therefore, it is not reasonable for the Defendant to take over searching the data inventory, which is already available, on the Plaintiff’s behalf. Thus, a retrospective search for videos in the inventory already available is not owed.
Similarly, the court emphasized that YouTube could not be held liable for failing to pre-filter postings made prior to its receipt of GEMA’s notifications. The obligation to filter was not a general one, but applied prospectively to specific content, once notice was delivered. Failure thereafter to block the noticed content would engage YouTube’s liability as a contributory tortfeasor.
Because both the French and German decisions are from courts of first instance, one may expect appeals and perhaps ultimately references to the CJEU to determine the nature and level of knowledge that triggers a host provider’s obligation to prevent repeat postings of infringing content.
http://www.legalis.net/spip.php?page=jurisprudence-decision&id_article=3421 ; Hamburg Regional Court, decision of April 20, 2012, Case 320 O 461/10, GEMA v. YouTube.
2. See, e.g., Paris Court of Appeals, decision of June 7, 2006, Tiscali Media / Dargaud Lombard, Lucky Comics, available at http://www.legalis.net/jurisprudence-decision.php3?id_article=1638 .
3. The Court of Justice of the EU on Nov. 24, 2011, applied Article 15 of the eCommerce Directive to overturn a Belgian decision that had imposed a general filtering obligation on an access provider, see SABAM v. Tiscali, available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/73670842/20111124-CJEU-Sabam-v-Tiscali-ENG .
4. The text at issue, Code of Intellectual Property Art. L. 216-1, applies only to transmission entities; entry fees are not specified in the general right of communication to the public enjoyed by authors and their assignees. The court rejected the broadcasters’ broader communication right claims in their guise of television producers because the broadcasters failed to prove copyright ownership of the content identified as infringing.
5. See, e.g., Tribunal de grande instance de Paris 3d chamber, 2d section, Oct. 19, 2007, Zadig Productions et autres v. Google, Inc., available at http://www.legalis.net/jurisprudence-decision.php3?id_article=2072 .

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