Source: https://digital.org.au/resources/internet-intermediaries-and-copyright-a-2018-update/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 00:26:06+00:00

Document:
A policy paper prepared by Prof Kimberlee Weatherall to inform discussion by the Australian Digital Alliance.
The way that it distinguishes between different kinds of internet intermediaries in imposing copyright risk.
This paper was written at the request of the Australian Digital Alliance (ADA2) and updates an earlier policy paper which I wrote for ADA in 2011, titled Internet Intermediaries and Copyright: An Australian Agenda for Reform.3 The 2011 paper reviewed Australian law relating to internet (online) intermediaries and their potential liability where their users engage in copyright infringement. That paper reviewed the law in Australia, the US, Canada, the EU (at the EU, but not national level), the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. It concluded that Australian copyright legislation imposed higher risks of liability on internet intermediaries than equivalent laws overseas, creating a comparative disadvantage for Australian-based educational and cultural institutions, businesses and others compared to their overseas competitors. It recommended that Australian law should be updated, including by expanding safe harbours found in Part V Div 2AA of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth).
In the six years since that paper, Australia has not altered its legislation, although expanding the availability of the safe harbours has been proposed in a 2014 Discussion Paper,4 recommended by the Australian Productivity Commission,5 and included in an earlier exposure draft of the Copyright Amendment (Disability and Other Access Measures) Bill.6 Developments in Australian case law (discussed below) have made clear that the risks of liability for most internet intermediaries (beyond internet access providers) are real. There have also been developments overseas although, for the most part, they have not changed the fundamental position: comparable jurisdictions make safe harbours available to many internet intermediaries, in circumstances where Australian intermediaries – private and public – risk copyright liability.
1 Professor of Law, The University of Sydney Law School, The University of Sydney, and volunteer member of the Board of the Australian Digital Alliance. This paper was prepared at the request of the Australian Digital Alliance. Research assistance was provided by Mr Onur Saygin, paid by the Australian Digital Alliance. Professor Weatherall has received no financial benefit from writing this paper. While feedback was sought, neither the ADA nor any ADA member has control over publication of this paper or the analysis presented herein.
3 Kimberlee Weatherall, Internet Intermediaries and Copyright: An Australian Agenda for Reform (2011), Policy Paper prepared for the Australian Digital Alliance (April 2011) (hereafter ‘2011 Paper’). The paper is available at http://digital.org.au/our-work/publication/internet-intermediaries-and-copyright-australian-agenda-reform. 4 Attorney-General’s Department, Online Copyright Infringement Discussion Paper (2014), Proposal 3.
5 Productivity Commission, Intellectual Property Arrangements (Final Report No 78, September 2016), Recommendation 19.1. The Australian government also sought submissions on the question of safe harbour expansion in 2011.
6 Exposure Draft, Copyright Amendment (Disability and Other Access Measures) Bill 2016 (available at https://www.communications.gov.au/file/13726/download?token=0Fg19Fuv).
members can be found here: http://digital.org.au/content/members.
involving a high risk of liability for copyright infringement, orange indicated the legal situation was unclear, and green indicated a low or non-existent risk of copyright infringement (perhaps conditional on the fulfilment of certain conditions, such as taking infringing material down on receiving notice). Table 1 updates the 2011 table, and expands the jurisdictions to include Israel, and other countries in the region with which Australia has comprehensive trade agreements.
Table 1: How risky is the internet intermediary business?
Although there is discussion around safe harbours and intermediaries in a number of countries, as discussed in detail below, with some specific proposals to impose some additional obligations on certain kinds of service providers, in particular larger/commercial user-generated content sites, in no country listed in this table is there serious consideration that safe harbours should be repealed. In some countries, additional obligations for commercial user-generated content sites the subject of discussion (in particular in the EU, discussed below, which has raised at the Commission level whether certain user-uploaded content sites should not have the benefit of the hosting safe harbour).
Internet intermediaries in Australia can face copyright liability regardless whether they cooperate with rights holders or remove infringing material on notification (notice and take-down), because Australian copyright law holds that a person (or company) that establishes a technical system to reproduce or make works available online will (often) be directly liable for copyright infringement (rather than liable for authorising infringements by people who use the system to copy or communicate copyright material). When an entity directly infringes copyright, knowledge of the infringement and even taking precautionary steps to reduce or avoid infringement are irrelevant. Depending on the circumstances and the kind of content involved, this issue is not always readily solved by licensing because so much material is protected by copyright. Licensing everything may be impractical, if not impossible.
Australia is currently proposing to extend safe harbours to educational institutions, cultural institutions and organisations that assist people with disabilities.7 No other country draws distinctions in this way to exclude most (but not all) private sector entities, including those not making a business out of the dissemination of copyright content – from the protection – and the obligations – of the safe harbours.
This update focuses on cases and legislative changes post-2011. The analysis is based on a review of most recently translated and available copies of legislation and secondary sources. It is not based on practice, including any practice whereby copyright owners might refrain from suing for infringement.8 This paper does not engage with the rationale for online safe harbours.9 The interest here is solely in assessing the current state of the law in a range of jurisdictions against which Australia would commonly seek to compare itself. The question is: is being an internet intermediary riskier, from a copyright perspective, in Australia than in comparable jurisdictions? The answer is yes.
7 Copyright Amendment (Service Providers) Bill 2017 (Cth).
Empirical Analysis of DMCA Takedown Notices’ (2014) 18 Virginia Journal of Law and Technology 369.
An internet intermediary is anyone – in general a company or institution – that provides the basic infrastructure of the Internet, and digital services and platforms. Internet access providers (IAPs), web hosts and cloud providers, and online platforms for the creation and exchange of content (such as YouTube, WordPress, Facebook, Reddit, as well as small blogs, individual websites that allow for any user interaction) are all internet intermediaries. So are many public institutions that provide internet access and host content: including every school, university, and library, and many significant galleries and museums. Internet intermediaries include both local and overseas commercial entities. They are intermediaries in the sense that they operate the infrastructure and services that connect end-users with content or other material. They risk infringing copyright when their users infringe.
liable for authorising infringement depending on a range of considerations such as their degree of knowledge, control, and the steps they take to reduce the risk of infringement.
10 Cloud computing involves providing customers with access to content and software via Internet access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. Commonly known cloud providers would include Dropbox or Google Docs. ‘Traditional’ hosting refers to companies that, in general, host whole sites or subsites managed by others.
11 By contrast with ‘traditional’ hosts, a user-generated webhost has their own site that acts as a central platform for the publication of and access to content created by others (classified here as hosting user- generated content). Examples would include YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, but also universities or schools hosting student-generated content directly uploaded by students, or libraries or galleries that might encourage users to upload photos or other media discussing their own experience.
12 See eg 17 USC §512(j); ECommerce Directive articles 12(3); 13(2); 14(3); Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) s 116AG(3)-(4) and s 115A (allowing for orders requiring an internet access provider to block certain flagrantly infringing websites).
Safe harbours exist across a range of areas of law.13 Some safe harbours are found in ‘horizontal’ rules (such as those found in the EU’s Ecommerce Directive14) and apply to protect from liability under a range of different laws; others are found in copyright legislation (as in the US,15 Australia,16 South Korea17 and Singapore18).
Safe harbours for the benefit of internet intermediaries, that purport to protect from (direct and secondary) liability for copyright infringement by end-users, are found in Part V Div 2AA of the Act.
13 For a discussion of safe harbours in Australia traversing a range of areas of law, see Peter Leonard, ‘Building Safe Harbours in Choppy Waters – Towards a Sensible Approach to Liability of Internet Intermediaries in Australia’ (2010) 29 Communications Law Bulletin 10.
14 Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market OJ L 178, 17.7.2000, p. 1–16 (hereafter ‘Ecommerce Directive’). ‘Horizontal’ means simply that the protection applies across areas of law, such as defamation, trade mark, copyright, misleading communications, negligent misstatements etc.
15 US Copyright Act, 17 USC §512.
16 Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) Part V Div 2AA.
17 See below page 28.
18 See below page 24.
19 For a detailed discussion see Sag, above n 9.
20 See Urban et al, above n 8.
22 See generally 2011 Paper, above n 3; see also Australian Law Reform Commission, Report No. 122: Copyright and the Digital Economy (2013), Chapter 11. Other provisions (s 39B and 112E) stating that a person who provides facilities for making, or facilitating the making of a communication is not taken to have authorised infringement merely because someone uses the facilities to infringe has been characterised by the High Court as a provision inserted for the avoidance of doubt, and of little practical effect: Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v iiNet Ltd  HCA 16; (2012) 248 CLR 42.
But Part V Div 2AA applies only to carriage service providers – in essence, providers of telecommunications network infrastructure.23 Start-ups; other commercial online service providers, schools, universities and other public and cultural institutions cannot rely on the safe harbours. In this respect Australian law remains non-compliant with the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement which requires safe harbours that provide limitations regarding the scope of remedies available against service providers for copyright infringements that they do not control, initiate, or direct.24 Australia’s failure to extend the safe harbours was a legislative error which remains uncorrected over a decade on from AUSFTA.
In 2015 Australian copyright owners were provided with a new tool to address online copyright infringement, s 115A of the Copyright Act 1968.25 Section 115A allows a copyright owner to seek an injunction to require one or more carriage service providers to take reasonable steps to disable access to an online location outside Australia that infringes, or facilitates an infringement of, their copyright and which has the primary purpose of infringing, or facilitating the infringement of, copyright (whether or not in Australia). Section 115A grants a discretion to the court; in exercising that discretion the court is required to take a number of factors into account, including, for example, the flagrancy of the infringement, whether the owner or operator of the online location demonstrates a disregard for copyright generally, and whether such an injunction is a proportionate response. To date the Federal Court of Australia has issued three judgments under s 115A, and made orders blocking a range of overseas sites including The Pirate Bay, Torrenthound, Isohunt,26 KickAss Torrents,27 and YesMovies and Project Free TV.28 Costs are shared between copyright owners and ISPs.
23 ‘Carriage service providers’ are defined in accordance with s 87 of the Telecomuunications Act 1997 (Cth).
25 Introduced by the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Act 2015 (Cth).
Ltd  FCA 1041 (2017) 349 ALR 154.
Foxtel Management Pty Ltd v TPG Internet Pty Ltd  FCA 1041 (2017) 349 ALR 154.
30 Allie Coyne, ‘ISPs ‘blindsided’ by shelved Australian piracy code’, ITNews, 18 February 2016, available at https://www.itnews.com.au/news/isps-blindsided-by-shelved-australian-piracy-code-415324.
bodies which administer an archive, or a key cultural institution (for relevant activities).
The Bill will improve the legal risk that faces certain key public sector institutions, although the safety appears incomplete. It is not clear on the face of the Bill whether third party service providers undertaking activities on behalf of any of these entities (eg, external cloud providers) will have the protection of the safe harbours. This could leave schools, universities, libraries and archives with a legal risk if required in their service contracts to indemnify private sector service providers for copyright infringement. Independent research entities (such as the CSIRO) will not benefit under the Bill. The Bill also leaves Australia non-compliant with the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, in that there are a large number of entities that provide caching, hosting or other intermediary services which will not have the benefit or the copyright enforcement obligations of the safe harbours. In the second reading speech, the Minister has indicated an intention to further consider the position of other service providers.
IAPs are protected as a result of the High Court decision in Roadshow v iiNet. The court held that internet access providers (IAPs32) are not liable for authorising infringements by their customers engaged in using BitTorrent to download films and television shows.33 The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, acting on behalf of copyright owners, had documented BitTorrent sharing by iiNet customers, and sent notices of infringement to iiNet including this information sufficient to identify subscriber accounts alleged to be involved. AFACT’s notices demanded that iiNet prevent the accounts from being used to infringe copyright, and ‘take any other action available under iiNet’s Customer Relationship Agreement (CRA) which was appropriate having regard to their conduct’. The CRA gave iiNet the right to terminate service for illegal conduct. iiNet took the view that it had no obligation to act.
31 Another proceeding relevant to internet access providers but not to their liability is the application for preliminary discovery brought by Dallas Buyers Club (DBC) against ISP iiNet.31 DBC sought the names and addresses of iiNet customers who had been ‘identified’ as infringing copyright the film Dallas Buyers Club (in the sense that they were iiNet customers to whose accounts IP addresses involved in the alleged infringements were assigned at the relevant time). The judgment confirms the power of the court to issue an order requiring the provision of contact details, but also confirmed the court’s discretion to supervise the use of information obtained via such means and the terms of any communications sent to the ISP’s customers. The court was not satisfied with initial draft proposed communications and the proceedings were eventually discontinued without resolving the court’s concerns, meaning that the information was not provided by iiNet.
32 IAPs are commonly called “ISPs” in Australia. This terminology however has potential to be confusing when discussing an international context where “ISP” is often a broader concept comprehending all internet intermediaries. Hence the term IAP is used in this paper.
33 Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v iiNet Ltd  HCA 16; (2012) 248 CLR 42.
reasonable steps.34 The case thus clarified that ‘[i]n general, in the absence of any positive steps that actively incite infringement, [IAPs] that provide internet access (as opposed, for example, to hosting services) will not be liable for authorising copyright infringements committed by their subscribers (or those using their accounts)’. As Lindsay notes, this has reduced IAPs’ incentive to cooperate in addressing copyright infringement, although IAPs can since 2015 be required to block flagrantly infringing websites.
The iiNet litigation considered the safe harbours at the Full Federal Court level (the High Court did not discuss Part V Div 2AA).36 iiNet argued that it had a policy for the termination of repeat infringers: it would terminate account holders if they confessed to copyright infringement or had been held liable by a court. The Full Federal Court held that this was not a policy for the termination of repeat infringers, as many, or even most repeat infringers would not have their accounts terminated. This is worth noting, because it suggests Australian courts are prepared to judge the adequacy of internal policies of service providers under the safe harbours. This should give copyright owners some assurance that beneficiaries of the safe harbours will be required genuinely to cooperate in copyright enforcement.
34 David Lindsay, ‘ISP Liability for End User Infringements: The High Court decision in Roadshow Films v iiNet’ (2012) 62(4) Telecommunications Journal of Australia 53.1.
36 Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v iiNet Ltd (2011) 89 IPR 1.
38 National Rugby League Investments Pty Ltd v Singtel Optus Pty Ltd (2012) 201 FCR 147;  FCAFC 59, -.
39 See the discussion in Rebecca Giblin, ‘Stranded in the Technological Dark Ages: Implications of the Full Federal Court’s Decision in NRL v. Optus’ (2012) 35 European Intellectual Property Review 632-641.
products like T-shirts. Customers order products through the Redbubble website (operated on servers not based in Australia, although the company is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange). Products are manufactured and dispatched by third party companies (fulfillers). These processes were automated. At the time of the conduct giving rise to the case, Redbubble had taken a range of precautions against the risk of copyright infringement, including requiring artists to agree that they owned or had permission to use copyright in uploaded works, establishing processes for copyright owners to notify potential infringements, and blocking certain keywords as search terms. But Redbubble sought to avoid preventing allowable parodies and non-infringing activity, and hence did not prohibit trade marks as keywords in a blanket way.
The court held that Redbubble had infringed in three separate ways, both directly and by authorising copyright infringement.
Redbubble directly infringed copyright by communicating infringing works (the artistic images) to the public in Australia. Uploading artists originated the infringing images, but Redbubble still determined the content of communications to customers ‘through its processes, protocols and arrangements with the artists’.40 The fact that Redbubble ‘has a user agreement with artists which deals with matters including the possibility of infringing materials, an IP policy, and a team dedicated to deal with impermissible content’ was cited by the Trial Judge as supporting Redbubble’s responsibility for communicating the images to the public.41 This creates perverse incentives: it means that taking steps to address copyright enforcement leads to responsibility and potential liability. This is the kind of result that safe harbours seek to avoid.
40 Pokémon Company International, Inc v Redbubble Ltd  FCA 1541 .
42 Contrary to Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) s 38.
43 Pokémon Company International, Inc v Redbubble Ltd  FCA 1541 .
44 The judgment does not state whether the notification by the copyright owner in November 2015 specifically identified URLs for products alleged to be infringing, stating only that the correspondence ““in all Pokémon characters, including 30 characters” that were specifically identified. That letter identified conduct which was claimed, amongst other things, to be the sale or offering for sale of infringing images on Redbubble products within the meaning of s 38 of the Copyright Act”: Pokémon Company International, Inc v Redbubble Ltd  FCA 1541 .
45 Pokémon Company International, Inc v Redbubble Ltd  FCA 1541 . 46 Pokémon Company International, Inc v Redbubble Ltd  FCA 1541 .
Prompt ex post removal of notified copyright infringement was insufficient – at least on the circumstances of this case – to avoid authorisation liability. This is striking: it suggests that, in Australia, companies that engage in a business that risks some copyright infringement (which arguably is most companies that enable user interaction online) can be liable for authorising infringement if they fail to prevent that infringement, despite taking extensive and reasonable steps to mitigate that risk. In the view of the trial judge, Redbubble was required to take steps that would significantly increase ‘false positives’ (blocking legitimate uses of copyright or trade mark content).49 It should be noted that the court was talking about steps Redbubble could be required to take to avoid the particular infringements involved in the case (i.e. those involving Pokémon characters). Effectively, the court appears to be demanding ‘takedown and stay down’ – specific actions to ensure that infringements do not reappear. The court did not appear to say that Redbubble was obliged generally to block tags involving trade mark terms, but to block specific terms once notified that (alleged) infringements were occurring (in the case, some correspondence had been received from the copyright owner in previous years).
This is reinforced by the remedies imposed. The trial judge refused an injunction, on the basis that Redbubble had since amended its program (to block content tagged with the trade mark terms), hence there was no risk of continuing infringement. The court also ordered only nominal damages of only AU$1, because no harm was proven: the relevant products were not such as would have been sold by the Pokémon company itself. No additional damages were available because Redbubble had not acted in flagrant disregard of the copyright owner’s rights. It is not clear what the result would have been had different evidence been offered on the nature of the harm.
An appeal was filed in the Redbubble case on 5 February 2018.
47 Pokémon Company International, Inc v Redbubble Ltd  FCA 1541 -.
48 Pokémon Company International, Inc v Redbubble Ltd  FCA 1541 .
49 Redbubble argued in the case that many of the images identified as infringing were in fact parodies and hence protected by s 41A of the Copyright Act. This argument was rejected by the court, which concluded that there was no evidence of the intention (parodic or otherwise) of the creator of the images, and in on their face, the images were attempts to ‘cash in’ on the fame of the images, rather than to engage in parody (even where the images were amusing).
50 Graeme Dinwoodie, ‘A Comparative Analysis of the Secondary Liability of Online Service Providers’, in Graeme Dinwoodie (ed), Secondary Liability of Internet Service Providers (Springer, 2017), 1, 3.
who fail to do everything possible to prevent infringement (even steps that will have significant impact on non-infringing activity) can face liability and an injunction, and possibly damages if harm can be proven – for example if there was evidence that some products competed with products of the copyright owner. And even an intermediary who takes all possible actions to mitigate the risk of infringement is still directly infringing when infringements occur. It remains to be seen how far such reasoning extends beyond ‘businesses carrying the inherent risk of infringement’ to, say, non-profit intermediaries hosting user-generated materials, or schools hosting student materials and interactions. 51 On the other hand, the decision has been characterized as a pyrrhic victory given the absence of monetary remedies.
IAPs merely providing internet access are unlikely to be held liable for the infringements of their subscribers even if they take no action to notify or educate infringing customers. But they can be required to block overseas sites that flagrantly infringe copyright.
o If the judgment in Pokémon Company International, Inc v Redbubble Ltd  FCA 1541, also face a high risk of liability for authorising infringement despite taking extensive steps to mitigate the risk of infringement.
• There has been no reform to exceptions or the safe harbours which might ameliorate that risk.
51 As Dinwoodie notes, ‘the legitimacy of the behaviour of intermediaries occupies a spectrum that requires greater flexibility (and room for more subtle calibration) than formal secondary liability doctrine might seem to allow. Indeed, such flexibility is necessary also to account for the different demands that might be imposed on smaller entities without he capital or sophistication of [the larger players]’: ibid, 25.
52 The On-Line Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), commonly known as Section 512 of the DMCA, is codified as Title II of the DMCA at 17 U.S.C. § 512 (2012).
online sites without having to bring a lawsuit by sending notices to OSPs to have material removed from hosted sites or search engine indexes. §512 is the model for the provisions in AUSFTA.
The legislation for the DMCA safe harbours has not been amended since 1998,53 despite significant developments in technology since that time (Google, Facebook, peer-to-peer file-sharing, YouTube and other user-generated content sites all post-date the development of the DMCA provisions, and arguably owe some part of their existence and growth to those safe harbours).
In recent times, §512 has been the subject of significant debate and discussion – but no concrete proposals for reform. In April 2013, the Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary Bob Goodlatte announced that a comprehensive bipartisan review would be conducted into Copyright law in the United States to assess the laws efficacy in the digital age. A number of hearings were conducted by the Committee in the period between March 2013 and April 2015. In December 2016, the committee published its first policy proposal document (which did not address safe harbours)55 and called for public comments by January 2017.56 No further developments are noted on the Committee’s website. The focus of the House Judiciary Committee on matters other than safe harbour reform is important, as it represents Congress’ current priorities.
There have been other discussions outside Congress. In July 2013, the US Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force, led by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), issued agreen paper on Copyright Policy, Creativity and Innovation in the Digital Economy,57 which, among other things, called for a multi-stakeholder dialogue on how to improve the operation of the safe harbours’ notice and takedown system. The Task Force subsequently held a number of roundtables, public meetings and forums on these questions, most recently in January 2018.
53 As noted above, a broadening of the safe harbours to cover all online service providers was proposed in the Online Copyright Infringement Discussion Paper (2014), and in an exposure draft of the Copyright Amendment (Disability Access and other Measures) Bill 2016: see above nn 4-6. The Productivity Commission also recommended extension of the safe harbour in its final report on Australia’s IP Arrangements: above n 5.
54 For a discussion, see Kimberlee Weatherall, ‘Evaluating SOPA: Who Should Enforce IP Online?’ (2012) 62(4) Telecommunication Journal of Australia 59.1-59.13.
56 These can be accessed at https://judiciary.house.gov/issue/us-copyright-law-review/#section-5.
57 The Green Paper is available at https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/news/publications/copyrightgreenpaper.pdf.
of thousands of submissions.59 As at 1 February 2018, no results from the inquiry are presently available. It is not clear when further developments in these external inquiries can be expected.
There is significant variation in practice. While some copyright owners, and some online service providers engaged in large-scale, automated infringement detection and removal (in some cases going beyond the requirements of the DMCA, voluntarily using technological means to further block the distribution of infringing materials before they become available online), other OSPs receive small numbers of notices and review them manually.
Given these findings, it seems unlikely that the outcome of the present discussions in the Copyright Office and beyond around the operation of the DMCA safe harbours will be a wholesale reconsideration of the approach found in §512, although next steps remain unclear.
There have been a number of cases considering the US safe harbours since 2011. They have clarified certain aspects of the safe harbours without, however, changing their architecture, and without fundamentally changing the parties who can rely on them.
59 A total of 92,398 submissions are available online. In November 2016, the Copyright Office sought further comment in the form of opinions and empirical studies specifically addressing the impact and effectiveness of the DMCA safe harbor provisions, and there are 79 Additional Comments available on regulations.gov. There are also 9 empirical studies are available on regulations.gov.
60 Daniel Seng, ‘The State of the Discordant Union: An Empirical Analysis of DMCA Takedown Notices’ (2014) 18 Virginia Journal of Law and Technology 369.
61 Jennifer Urban, Joe Karaganis and Brianna Schofield, Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice (March 2017).
62 See similarly Maayan Perel and Niva Elkin-Koren, ‘Accountability in Algorithmic Copyright Enforcement’ (2016) 19 Stanford Journal of Law and Technology 473, 473 (‘the Notice and Takedown (N&TD) regime has become ubiquitous and embedded in the system design of all major intermediaries: major copyright owners increasingly exploit robots to send immense volumes of takedown requests and major online intermediaries, in response, use algorithms to filter, block, and disable access to allegedly infringing content automatically, with little or no human intervention’).
63 Ted Johnson, ‘Internet Service Providers, Studios and Record Labels Call it Quits on Copyright Alert System’, Variety, 27 January 2017, available at http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/copyright-alerts-piracy-mpaa- comcast-att-1201971756/.
infringing material) or risk losing any entitlement to rely on the safe harbour.64 ‘Red flag’ knowledge arises when a service provider is ‘aware of facts that would have made the specific infringement ‘objectively’ obvious to a reasonable person’; ‘The infringement must be immediately apparent to a non-expert.’65 Generalised knowledge that infringement is occurring is insufficient to deprive an intermediary of the safe harbours.
This issue was considered in Capitol Records, LLC v. Vimeo,66 in which copyright holders of various sound recordings and compositions sued Vimeo, a user-uploaded video content hosting website. The rights holders alleged that Vimeo was responsible for the copyright infringement in the audio content of 200 videos on the website and had evidence that Vimeo employees had viewed videos containing the copyright material. The Second Circuit held that this in itself was not sufficient to create knowledge that would disentitle Vimeo from relying on the safe harbours: the question was whether infringement was obvious to a person without specialised understanding of music or copyright law. In proving disentitlement to DMCA protection, a plaintiff needs to identify specific instances where red flag knowledge or wilful blindness has occurred and cannot rely on generalisations.67 The court also emphasised that voluntary monitoring of videos visual content did not deprive it of DMCA protection in relation to audio content.
65 These phrases are interpretations of the statutory text, which states that the service provider cannot rely on the safe harbour if they fail to act where “aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent”: §512(c)(1)(A). In Mavrix Photographs, LLC v. LiveJournal, Inc. (2017) 853 F.3d 1020 for example, photographs uploaded to the site had watermarks, which might have made infringement obvious (the matter was remitted for trial).
66 Capitol Records, LLC v. Vimeo, LLC 826 F.3d 78 (2d Cir. 2016).
67 A similar conclusion was also emphasised in Viacom Intern. Inc. v. YouTube, Inc. 940 F.Supp.2d 110 (2d Cir 2013).
68 Viacom International v YouTube, Inc 676 F.3d 19, 34 (2nd Cir 2012).
69 see eg Mavrix Photographs, LLC v. LiveJournal, Inc. (2017) 853 F.3d 1020 (see above n 64). In that case there was a live question whether the moderators were agents of LiveJournal, hence involving LiveJournal directly in the infringements. But cf BWP Media USA, Inc. v. Clarity Digital Group, LLC 820 F.3d 1175, where the business model of the website was structured such that rather than a centralized writing staff, independent contractors referred to as examiners were the source of content on the website. The Court held that this arrangement did not make the examiners ‘agents’ and did not preclude reliance on the hosting safe harbour when these independent contractors had uploaded an infringing photograph to the site.
access provider Cox Communications, alleging vicarious and contributory liability for its users’ infringing BitTorrent use: in other words, the facts resembled those in Roadshow v iiNet. It was held that Cox was unable to rely on the DMCA safe harbour because it did not have or reasonably implement a repeat infringer policy. Although Cox did have a policy for addressing infringing use by subscribers, ‘Cox failed to qualify for the DMCA safe harbor because it failed to implement its policy in any consistent or meaningful way — leaving it essentially with no policy’.71 The jury at first instance had held Cox liable for contributory infringement, but this finding was overturned and remitted to the lower court because the jury at first instance was incorrectly instructed on the level of knowledge required. The 4th Circuit held that for Cox to be liable, BMG would have to show that Cox knew of specific instances of infringement or was willfully blind i.e. that it consciously avoided learning about specific instances of infringement). It would not be sufficient that Cox ought to have known of particular infringements or that it knew generally that infringement was occurring.
A review of developments in the US suggests that there has been much discussion and review of the DMCA safe harbours. They are however demonstrably woven into the practices of both copyright owners and intermediaries, and they have not prevented some (especially the large) service providers from engaging in much more active enforcement (DMCA-plus). There are, at the time of writing, no current specific proposals for reform with serious political support. The courts have not endorsed attempts to impose obligations to act on generalized knowledge of infringement, but have required service providers to take seriously their obligation to take down material once notified, and to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers. Unlike the Australian court that decided the Redbubble case, the US Courts have been solicitous to protect exceptions to copyright infringement.
At the time of the 2011 Paper, there was a Bill before the Canadian Parliament proposing numerous amendments to Canadian law including amendments addressing questions of intermediary liability. These amendments became part of Canadian law in 2012.
70 BMG Rights Management LLC v Cox Communications Inc (4th Cir., February 2, 2018).
71 Cox had a thirteen-strike system. The first notice produced no action. The second through seventh notices resulted in warning emails to the subscriber. After the eighth and ninth notices, Cox would display a warning page, but the subscriber could reactivate their service by clicking an acknowledgement. After the tenth and eleventh notices, Cox suspended services, requiring the subscriber to call a technician, who, after explaining the reason for suspension and advising removal of infringing content, reactivated service. After the twelfth notice, the subscriber was suspended and directed to a specialized technician, who, after another warning to cease infringing conduct, reactivated service. After the thirteenth notice, the subscriber was again suspended, and considered for termination. Cox would accept only one notice per subscriber per day, and reset the thirteen strike ‘clock’ every 6 months. Cox however always reactivated customers whose accounts were terminated, and then later ceased terminating repeat infringers.
72 Lenz v Universal Music Corp 801 F.3d 1126 (9th Cir. 2015).
This is notably broader than the roughly equivalent ss 39B and 112E of the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Those provisions provide only that a ‘[a] person (including a carrier or carriage service provider) who provides facilities for making, or facilitating the making of, a communication is not taken to have authorised any infringement of copyright in a work merely because another person uses the facilities so provided to [infringe]’ (emphasis added). Thus unlike the Canadian provision, the Australian provisions leave open the possibility of direct liability.
Hosting is addressed under subsection 31.1(4), which states that intermediaries who provide hosting of content do not infringe copyright, unless the intermediary knows that there is a ‘a decision of a court of competent jurisdiction’ which indicates that the entity storing the content infringes copyright in the way they are using that content.
74 Copyright Act 1985 (Canada)s 31.1(2). The conditions are that the intermediary must not modify the communication (other than for technical reasons); must ensure that technical directions (eg, no-caching directions) specified in accordance with industry practice are executed; and must not interfere with the use of technology that is lawful and consistent with industry practice in order to obtain data on the use of the work or other subject-matter.
75 Copyright Act 1985 (Canada) s 41.27.
76 Copyright Act 1985 (Canada) s 27(2.3), 31.1(6). 77 Copyright Act 1985 (Canada) s 41.25.
The exemptions from liability established in this Directive cover only cases where the activity of the information society service provider is limited to the technical process of operating and giving access to a communication network over which information made available by third parties is transmitted or temporarily stored, for the sole purpose of making the transmission more efficient; this activity is of a mere technical, automatic and passive nature, which implies that the information society service provider has neither knowledge of nor control over the information which is transmitted or stored.
78 Copyright Act 1985 (Canada) s 41.27.
79 There have been amendments to UK copyright legislation in the form of new exceptions for quotation, parody, caricature and pastiche, libraries, education, disabled people, research (text and data mining) and public bodies, which came into force in 2014. These exceptions are not relevant to the technical issues dealt with this paper.
80 Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, O.J. L 167, 22/06/2001 P. 0010 – 0019 (‘Information Society Directive’), art 5.
81 Implemented in the UK via the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 (SI 2002 No 2013).
82 Joined Cases C-236/08-C0238/08, Google France SARL v Louis Vuitton Malletier SA, 2010 E.C.R. I-2417, ¶¶109-114. This is subject to the requirement that the activities of the search engine are considered to be ‘of a mere technical, automatic and passive nature’, implying that the service provider ‘has neither knowledge of nor control over the information which is transmitted or stored.’ Whether in fact a search engine (or indeed any other kind of provider) can rely on the safe harbours depends on the facts of the case and in particular whether the intermediary is operating in a neutral manner – but the detailed application of these standards has, so far, been left to national courts and not finally settled by the CJEU: Dinwoodie above n 51, 36-37.
83 Information Society Directive above n 80 art 8(3); ECommerce Directive above n 14 art 11.
For internet access providers, the Copyright in the Information Society Directive provides exceptions for temporary reproductions occurring in the course of communication, regardless of whether the communication is an infringing one (Information Society Directive, Article 5), and establishes, through the Ecommerce Directive84 a safe harbour for ‘mere conduits’ that has less conditions than the Australian safe harbour (Art. 12): IAPs are not required to have a policy for the termination of repeat infringers. It may be worth noting too that provisions of the UK’s Digital Economy Act 2010 designed to implement a system for sending infringement notices to ISP subscribers was not brought into effect and has been repealed.85 In 2015 a joint initiative of representatives of the UK’s creative industries and major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) was launched, Creative Content UK, comprising an education campaign and voluntary system for passing on notices of infringement to subscribers. Website blocking has been implemented via s 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (UK) and applied in a series of cases (see below).
In relation to caching, all internet intermediaries have the benefit of Article 13 of the Ecommerce Directive, which exempts an internet intermediary from any damages award provided that it does not modify the information, complies with any access conditions at the source, and with updating rules communicated in a standard way, does not interfere with technology used to ensure accurate usage data, and removes infringing material on receiving notice of its removal from the source location.
84 ECommerce Directive above n 14.
85 Dinwoodie above n 51, 48. The Atc was repealed by the Deregulation Act 2015 (UK) in light of the success of s 97A of the Copyright Act.
86 ECommerce Directive above n 14 article 14.
87 Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, O.J. L 167 , 22/06/2001 P. 0010 – 0019 (hereafter EU Information Society Directive), Article 8(3).
88 The Safe Harbour does not apply if the customer is ‘is acting under the provider’s authority or control’. This is unlikely in traditional web hosting or cloud service provision: Ecommerce Directive, above n 14 Article 14.3. 89 Dinwoodie above n 51, 40-41.
90 European Commission, ‘A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe’ (Communication) COM (2015) 192 final, at 11.
In 2016 the Commission issued a communication on Online Platforms and the Digital Single Market.92 This communication noted that ‘[w]hile certain concerns were raised on liability issues the consultation showed broad support for the existing principles of the e-Commerce Directive.’93 The Commission therefore indicated its intention to ‘maintain a balanced and predictable liability regime for online platforms’, subject to dealing with certain specific issues – including copyright.
92 European Commission, ‘Online Platforms and the Digital Single Market: Opportunities and Challenges for Europe’ (Communication) COM (2016) 288 Final.
95 European Commission, Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, COM(2016) 593 final, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=17200.
The proposal was specifically targeted at large user-generated platforms, and sought to impose specific, additional requirements on them. In particular, Art 13 envisages licensing, and the use of content filtering technology that would prevent infringements of content identified ahead of time by copyright owners, without those owners needing to send notices ex post. The proposal would leave the safe harbours in place for many entities which would presently rely on them.
98 This is reflected in the third (and current) compromise proposal of the Presidency: see ibid.
A key question that has arisen is when a service provider is eligible to rely on the safe harbours established by the Ecommerce Directive. Case law establishes that an online service provider which plays an active role in relation to content will have knowledge of or control over the data and hence be ineligible for safe harbour protection.101 This will apply when the service provider provides assistance to its users by, for instance, optimising the presentation of the online offers for sale or promoting those offers. A key question is whether an entity is engaged in an active, rather than a passive role.
100 Dinwoodie above n 51.
101 C-236/08 to C-238/08, Google France and Google paragraphs 113-114, 120 (23 March 2010), stating that a service provider falls outside article 14 when it ‘plays an active role of such a kind as to give it knowledge of, or control over, those data’.
104 Senftleben et al, above n 97, 16-17, criticising the original DSM Proposal for suggesting that any optimisation at all would deprive a service provider of Article 14 protection.
In the 2017 Pirate Bay decision,105 the CJEU considered a request for an order that two key internet access providers in the Netherlands block access to The Pirate Bay. The question referred to the court was whether The Pirate Bay – which provided an index of links to infringing material, without actually hosting any infringing material – was itself communicating copyright works to the public. The Court held that the Pirate Bay was directly communicating works. The case illustrates that the case law in Europe regarding the communication right, and when it is exercised, is developing, and can take into account questions regarding the knowledge and commercial motivations of the alleged communicator. Controversy over the scope of the communication right has complicated negotiations over the Digital Single Market Directive as noted above.
A question however has arisen relating to how far such injunctions may go to requiring pro-active enforcement or filtering of infringing content, consistent with art 15 of the Ecommerce Directive, which prohibits monitoring of activity, and other principles of European law including in particular a requirement of proportionality and respect for fundamental rights of subscribers and the freedom of intermediaries to conduct legitimate business. Two cases clarify this point. In Scarlet v SABAM,109 Belgian collecting society SABAM requested an (open-ended) order that a network access provider monitor and block peer-to-peer transfer of music files relating to works for which SABAM administered the relevant rights. The CJEU held that a broad order of the kind sought would both contravene the Ecommerce Directive ban on general monitoring obligations, and unduly compress users’ fundamental rights.
105 Stichting Brein v Ziggo BV and XS4All Internet BV, C-610/15 (14 June 2017).
107 UPC Telekabel Wien GmbH v Constantin Film Verleih GmbH and Wega Filmproducktionsgesellschaft mbH, Case C-314/12, 27 March 2014.
108 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp v British Telecommunications Plc  EWHC 1981 (Ch); also Dramatico Entertainment Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd  EWHC 268 (Ch); EMI Records Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd  EWHC 379 (Ch); Football Association Premier League Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd  EWHC 2058 (Ch); Paramount Home Entertainment International Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd  EWHC 3479 (Ch); 1967 Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd  EWHC 3444 (Ch); Cartier International v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd  EWHC 3354.
109 Scarlet Extended, Case C-70/10 Scarlet Extended SA v. Société belge des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs SCRL (SABAM)  ECR I-11959.
110 Case C-360/10 Belgische Vereniging van Auteurs, Componisten en Uitgevers CVBA (SABAM) v. Netlog NV  ECLI:EU:C:2012:85.
In other words, the CJEU has required that procedural protections be in place for ISP and user interests. The requirement of proportionality also ‘suggests that measures appropriately imposed on one intermediary might differ from those to be implemented by another of quite different size and sophistication’.112 Courts at the national level have, however, imposed some pro-active requirements to prevent future infringement. Thus German courts applying the Störerhaftung doctrine courts have imposed on intermediaries obligations to prevent future infringements of essentially the same character as those arising in the case.113 Similar questions are also, as noted above, being aired in the discussion around the Digital Single Market Proposal.
111 Nedim Malovic, ‘Presumed Innocent: Should the Law on Online Copyright Enforcement and ISP Liability Change?’, forthcoming in Nordiskt Immateriellt Rättsskydd.
112 Dinwoodie above n 51, 57-59.
113 Dinwoodie above n 51, 52-53, citing Annette Kur, ‘Secondary Liability for Trademark Infringement on the Internet: The Situation in Germany and Throughout the EU (2014) 37 Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 525. 114 New Zealand has introduced legislation in other areas of interest: in 2015, New Zealand enacted the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 (NZ) which provides recourse to persons who have been harmed because of the digital publication by third parties of content which was made in confidence or without their consent. It is targeted at communications that cause serious emotional distress (s 4 definition of ‘harm’), such as through the sharing of intimate images. Sections 23-25 of the Act create a safe harbour from liability for ‘online content hosts’ (OCH). Section 24 specifics that if the process set out in that section is followed, ‘No civil or criminal proceedings may be brought against an online content host in respect of the content complained of’ (s24(1)), with this being subject to whether the host provides an ‘easily accessible mechanism that enables a user to contact the host about specific content in the manner provided in that section’ (s25(2)) and whether ‘the person who provides the specific content does so on behalf, or at the direction, of the online content host’ (s25(3)). Section 24 sets out various notification requirements and procedures, such as that the OCH ‘provide the author of the specific content with a copy of the notice of complaint…’ (s24(2)(a)(i)), and ‘as soon as practicable but no later than 48 hours’ after receiving a notice of complaint, the OCH should if possible, notify the author and inform them of a right to submit a counternotice’ (s24(2)(a)(ii)). Failure to follow the process does not of itself create liability: s23(2).
115 Copyright Act 1994 (NZ) ss 16 (definition of restricted acts); 29, 30, 33 (primary infringement); s16(1)(i) (authorisation as a restricted act).
116 Copyright Act 1994 (NZ) s 2(1).
117 Note that like the Canadian provision, and unlike the Australian ss 39B/112E, this exception applies to both direct and authorisation liability.
New Zealand law has no exception that allows for the large-scale copying and storage necessary for the provision of internet search,121 or text or data mining.
118 Copyright Act 1994 (NZ) s 92B(4). The provision states that it ‘does not limit’ the right of a copyright owner to obtain an injunction. This wording is not entirely clear but may require a showing of liability (as compared to the lack of such a requirement under European law).
119 Copyright Act 1994 (NZ) s 92E. The conditions are that the service provider must not modify the communication; must comply with copyright owner conditions on access; must not interfere with the use of technology that is lawful in order to obtain data on the use of the work or other subject-matter; and must update consistent with reasonable industry practice.
120 Copyright Act 1994 (NZ) s 92C.
consists of the storage of information provided by a recipient of the service’.
122 Copyright Act 1994 (NZ) ss 122A – 122U.
124 Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (NZ), Copyright and the Creative Sector (December 2016), available at http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/business/intellectual-property/copyright/copyright-and- the-creative-sector/copyright-and-the-creative-sector.pdf.
There is no need for active surveillance by an ISP of its customers’ activities to identify infringement, however the service provider must have a suitable policy to deal with repeat offenders and technical measures for protecting copyright materials.
125 Copyright Act 1987 (Sing) ss 193B; 252A.
provisions on user caching: s 193E, 252E.
127 Copyright Act 1987 (Sing) ss 193D, 252C.
128 Copyright Act 1987 (Sing) ss 193DDA-193DDC, introduced by the Copyright Amendment Act 2014 (Sing).
130 above n 37, discussed above page 8.
In summary, it appears that as compared to Australia, internet intermediaries in general in Singapore face lower legal risks of liability for copyright infringement when conducting activities like providing network access, caching, hosting and operating a search engine or similar service.
Copyright law in Japan is governed by the Copyright Act. Also relevant to issues of intermediary liability is the Act on the Limitation of Liability for Damages of Specified Telecommunications Service Providers 2001.132 Like the European Ecommerce Directive, the Act provides horizontal protection from liability (it limits liability for ‘any right of others is infringed by information distribution’).133 The purpose of the latter Act is to set forth limitations of liability for damages of specified telecommunications service providers, and to grant right holders the right to demand disclosure of identification information of the senders in case of infringement of the rights through information distribution by specified telecommunications services.
Japan has specific exceptions in its Act to allow internet search (articles 47septies and 47octies) and caching (article 49quinquies).
authorised by a person who merely enabled, possibly assisted or even encouraged another to do that act, but who did not actually have or who did not purport to have any authority which he could grant to justify the doing of that act: at .
132 Act No 137 of 2001.
Eye case.135 In this case, the defendant karaoke bar was held directly liable for infringement when sued by the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers, because they had encouraged patrons to sing to copyrighted tracks and did this as part of a business.136 In the 2001 Video Mates decision137 a karaoke equipment lessor was found liable to pay royalties to same society due to the infringing actions of the lessee. The court took into account the likelihood of copyright materials being played on the equipment and the ease with which the defendant could check whether the lessee had a licence to play copyright music; this was sufficient to impose a duty of care in favour of the Society which had been breached because the lessor did not verify the existence of a licensing agreement.
Secondary infringement is also possible: in the 2005 File Rogue decision,138 the defendant was found to be liable as an accessory due to its contribution to infringement of third parties, because the file sharing service it offered enabled a high volume of infringement by users, the defendant could not show that licensed files had been shared, the defendant was aware of the infringing activity and could have stopped the infringement and there was a future intention to profit from the service which was free at the time of Court assessment.
In respect of TV broadcast recording and access providers being held liable for infringement, Japanese Courts have looked at the technical setup when determining intermediary service providers liability. In the 2005 Rokuga Net decision, the defendant, a for-profit facilitator of transmitting Japanese broadcasts to overseas users was found to be directly liable. Notably the defendant in that case ran the entire technical set up itself. In contrast, in the 2006 Maneki TV case, the defendant was found not to be liable for providing a similar service because users had to purchase and remotely operate a piece of hardware to enable the service.139 In the 2009 Winny II decision, a distributer who developed P2P file sharing software was found not liable for infringing activities of users, because it could not be shown that the distributor both knew of and recommended the infringing use of the software (ie the latter could not be shown).
135 Club Cat’s Eye/Singing at a Karaoke Lounge, 1984 (O) No.1204 (1988) (Japanese Sup. Ct., Mar. 15, 1988).
136 According to secondary materials on the Japanese law, ‘Under Japanese law, it is not clear if one can obtain injunctive relief from indirect infringers. A copyright holder may seek both damages and injunctive relief. A damages claim is based on tort law. Article 719(2) of the Japanese Civil code provides an indirect actor’s liability. In copyright cases, this provision has been applied to damages claims, but not injunctive relief. An injunctive relief claim is based on Article 112 (1) of the Copyright Act. However, it is not clear if one can obtain injunctive relief from indirect infringers. Thus, these who seek to stop an infringement often try to argue that a party that looks like an indirect infringer is actually a direct infringer. The courts tend to accept such argument’: Watanabe and Kidokoro, above n134.
138 187 File Rogue, Heisei 16 (Ne) 446 (2003) (Tokyo High Ct., Mar. 31, 2005).
140 Watanabe and Kidokoro, above n 134. For example, in the MYUTA decision, company called ‘Image City’ offered a service (MYUTA) whereby a user would upload his or her own music files from their personal computer to Image City’s servers, and could then download music files to their cell phone for listening. The Tokyo District Court held that in these circumstances Image City was reproducing music (and hence a direct infringer in the absence of a licence): Hanji No. 1979, page 100, Tokyo District Court (5/25/2008).東京地判平 成 19・5・25 判時 1979 号 100 頁, described in Watanabe and Kidokoro, above n 134.
144 Soribada, 2005 Da 11626 (2007) (Sup. Ct. Rep. of Korea, Jan. 25, 2007); Soribada, 2006 La 1535 (2007) (Seoul High Ct., Oct. 10, 2007). The case involved developers of a P2P file sharing service as defendants. The court found the defendants liable due to negligence in failing to recognise the assistance provided to infringers as well as liable for aiding and abetting given that the developers were aware that there were infringing uses for the software but notwithstanding this they developed and distributed the software and facilitated copyright infringement. In subsequent litigation, the Court granted a preliminary injunction to rights holders and suggested technical measures which only allowed download of files confirmed to be licensed by the provider (in order to mitigate their liability, the Soribada developers had introduced a system which would prevent download of files in relation to which the right holder had specifically requested action).
145 Note that in addition to the takedown provisions in the copyright law, Korea has a broader takedown system via the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, etc. (ICNA, Information and Communications Network Act). This provision is applied to infringements such as defamation or breach of privacy (in at least one decision a court has refused to apply it to infringement of trade mark). For more information see the World Intermediary Liability Map Project of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/page/wilmap-south- korea.
report noted concerns about the potential of cloud providers without proposing any amendments.
intermediary immediately to suspect access to works on notification by a rightholder: intermediaries have no discretion to determine whether such notified works infringe copyright.
As under the US DMCA (and in the European system) certain orders can be made against an OSP. A provider of transmission services can be required to terminate specific accounts, and/or take reasonable measures to prevent access to specific foreign websites. Other OSPs can also be required to delete or prevent access to infringing files, and ‘Other measures that the court deems necessary to the extent of imposing the minimum burden on the online service provider’ (art 103bis).
Where the illegal forwarder of the relevant work, etc. is identifiable, the dispatch of warning sign wording to the forwarder of the work, etc. requesting for the prohibition of infringement on the copyright.
147 Korean Copyright Act articles 133-2 and 133-3.
resort to the safe harbor under Article 102(2).
search engines, subject to certain basic conditions.152 The Bill however did not proceed to legislation.
151 Copyright Act 2007 (Israel), s 19.
152 Section 10 of the Bill would have prevented liability of a service provider for torts or IP infringement provided (a) the service provider did not know, when the material was uploaded, that distribution constituted a tort or IP infringement, (b) the data distributor was not acting on behalf of the service provider or subject to its control, and (c) the service provider acts to remove access to the material after receiving a complaint.
there was substantial, significant and actual contribution by contributor to the infringement.
other lawful use of the work; (iii) provided the said copy does not have significant economic value in itself.

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