Source: http://www.husovec.eu/2014/03/cjeu-allowed-website-blocking.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 20:10:55+00:00

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So the CJEU finally issued its UPC Telekabel Wien C-314/12 decision. It contains several good points, but also some missed opportunities (the rejections of a need of specific measures is quite a disappointment), and black-box type of issues, where only the time will tell.
But before I get to the ruling, it is very interesting to see that CJEU yet again (Scarlet, Sabam same story) did not follow a very interesting argumentation of the Advocate General Cruz Villalón, who suggested to take a look at the injunctions also from the perspective of "quality of the law". This might be a good/bad news for the pending data retention reference in Digital Rights Ireland C-293/12, where he suggested to the CJEU to invalidate the data retention directive mostly not due to proportionality considerations, but for "quality of the law" reasons. I think that his argument there is politically not acceptable for the CJEU, but let's see. So back to the website blocking.
The Court first accepts (§ 23-40) that an access provider who has no affiliation or business relationship with the infringers (streaming websites) can still be a target of the injunctions against intermediaries. This basically means that anybody who enables infringement is capable of being sued from Art. 8(3) injunctions. No surprise here.
In the second part, the Court allows some of the website blocking injunctions as such, but makes it subject to couple of conditions. The Court recalls that the case is about a maximal admissible celling of these injunctions (§ 45), and not about minimal standard required from the Member States (§ 43). This means, as I suggested earlier, that this case in fact does not answer whether the Member States have to provide for such injunctions, but only whether they are permissible when provided for under the national law.
(iii) the freedom of information of internet users, whose protection is ensured by Article 11 of the Charter.
As anticipated earlier, the right to fair trial argument did not appear in the case, but there are some consequences for it as well (see below). The relevant part of the decision are then § 49 -63.
I think this is implicit acceptance of openly formulated website blocking injunctions, and also rejection of AG's suggestion of a need for specific measures. This should make German BGH feel more comfortable with its own case-law. Not sure about ISPs.
This paragraph is slightly confusing, but I think it essentially refers to execution proceedings when an openly formulated website blocking injunction was being granted. Again, this kind of rule might make a perfect sense for a German or other lawyer who is used to negligence based liability for disobeying the rulings also in the execution proceedings. In some countries, however, execution proceedings attaches strict liability standards to disobeying of the decisions. For these countries, it might be more challenging to implement this principle. This seems to shift the entire debate of exact measures from the court proceedings to the execution proceedings. Also I keep wondering how compatible with the eCommerce Directive it would be to fine an access provider in such proceedings, as Art. 12 safe harbor might be still a limitation here (just a thought).
This is an important point. The CJEU here implicitly adheres to the prohibition of the collateral censorship as stipulated in the case-law of the ECHR. This part of the ruling should prevent some forms over-blocking e.g. by means of IP blocking when the IP address is shared.
I consider this to be the most important part of the ruling. My reading is that unless the procedural law of the Member State can guarantee that, the website blocking can not be granted at the first place. Although this remark is made in the framework of a right to the freedom of information, I believe that it can have a big impact also on the right to fair trial issue. Especially the countries that grant website blocking injunctions without any possibility to challenge them by the targeted website ex post (UK courts now incorporate such possibility), it might prevent the injunctions to be granted entirely. CJEU makes an important step by safeguarding the same for the Internet users as well. It would be interesting to see if the national law of your Member State enable that kind of challenge of a non-party. Any thoughts?
Again strict liability might be precluded in these cases.
A difficult sentence, but probably says following: website blocking must (i) make it more difficult to access the source, and [sic!] (ii) seriously discourage Internet users from accessing the blocked source. It is my understanding that unless such a measure exists, not even an open ended injunctions should be granted. I think that the analyses of Justice Arnold in his blocking cases can hold the water in this respect. This part, however, needs to be scrutinized for its impact beyond this brief comment.
My main issue with the judgment is that it rejected a need for a measure-specific injunctions as suggested by the Advocate General. The CJEU to the contrary, seems to be fine with shifting the debate to the executoin proceedings. I am not sure how flexible are these procedural rules in different countries. On the other hand, CJEU appers to set its standard for what is effective a bit higher than AG, who was also willing to accept also "easily circumventable measures". This negative parts are however somehow overweighted by a good feeling from paragraph 57 of the judgment. Let's see if the second look gives the same impression as well.
And also, an another consequence of this ruling is that the debate of what constitutes a general monitoring obligations can be perhaps again re-opend.

References: CJEU 
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 Art. 8
 § 49
 Art. 12
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