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Domain Registrar Can be Held Liable for Pirate Site, Court Rules (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the holding-accountable dept.

The Higher Regional Court of Saarbrucken (a city in Germany) concluded Key-Systems, a German-based registrar, can be held secondarily liable for the infringing actions of a customer if it fails to take action if rightsholders point out "obvious" copyright infringing activity online. From a report: This means that, if a site owner is unresponsive to takedown requests, Key-Systems and other registrars can be required to take a domain name offline, even when the infringing activity is limited to a single page. The local music group BVMI is happy with the outcome of the case. They believe it will help copyright holders to take action against infringing activity. "This is a further important clarification in the legal space of the internet, helping it to become clearer and fairer for creatives and their partners," says Rene Houareau, BVMI's Managing Director Legal & Political Affairs. "The [court] affirms, with clearly outlined criteria, the responsibility of so-called registrars and thus gives affected rightsholders an important legal tool to defend themselves against the unlawful use of their content on the internet."

1 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Here's the logic by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If a licensed driver kills another motorist on the road, is the government held liable for provisioning the murderer a license?

    I fail to see the logic this court used.

    I know this is going to sound like Europe bashing and it's really not. I've been to Europe a lot. Used to work for a European company. I'm really not anti-Europe. But I'm going to tell you how this kind of thing happens and I'm probably not going to get voted up enough to get noticed, but here goes.

    1) European countries don't have freedom of speech similar to the USA. So this means that while freedom of speech in the USA can cover a variety of legal matters that aren't really "speech" as such, it can't happen in Europe. In fact, you can actually go to jail for years for saying stuff in Europe that they don't like. Not for doing bad things. For saying things they don't like.
    2) EU justice (outside of maybe the departing UK and France) is pretty bogus. Really bad, horrible things that might get you locked up forever in the USA get sentences of say, 10 years, which to a European seems to be an insanely long time to punish someone. Remember that guy in Norway who shot over 70 people? If he lives a normal lifespan he'll probably have 2 more chances in his life to break his own record after getting released because locking up a killer for life is evil according to most of the EU and apparently Norway simply can't keep him locked up more than 25 years for mass murder.
    3) So the fact that the EU doesn't have free speech and they feel sorry for criminals has led to another situation where once you get out of jail for your heinous crimes, you can petition legally for the criminal record to be wiped. It's like you never dd it.

    So yes, a society that doesn't value victims at all and feels sorry for criminals and doesn't respect free speech might just have some really interesting ideas about internet piracy and who is actually liable.