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German Domain Registrar Liable For Copyright Infringement

Posted by timothy on from the with-a-name-like-h33t dept.

jfruh writes "When the German domain registrar Key-Systems registered and maintained the domain h33t.com, should it have been obvious that their customer would use the site for unauthorized distribution of Robin Thicke albums? A regional German court says that they should've known, and once they had been notified they should have taken steps to prevent it from happening. Obviously domain registrars are worried that this will upend their entire business model."

1 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Liable *of not acting upon obvious infringement* by aaribaud · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... which the Slashdot title does not exactly convey. From TFA, what happened is the domain was registered and used to distribute material without consent of the right owner(s), the infringement was obvious, the registrar was notified, and did not take action beyond passing the notice to the website owner. *This* lack of action is what made them liable; TFA even explicitly states that generally, registrars are not liable if they do act promptly upon serious requests.