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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."

7 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. So who is required to pay... by Bradmont · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So who is required to pay for the employees who will filter and handle the incoming torrent of bogus takedown requests?

    1. Re:So who is required to pay... by sabri · · Score: 4, Funny

      The court that does not understand anything about the matter they're ruling on, of course.

      --
      I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
    2. Re:So who is required to pay... by Dunbal · · Score: 3, Funny

      Magic and fairies. Actually the registrar should reply to anyone who sends a takedown request with a bill for the takedown. Start at what, $5000? No no we will comply and take it down, but first we have to verify and to do that we need to hire staff, so here's the bill. If there's infringing material it will be down in a month or so...

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  2. So In Germany by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:So In Germany by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Informative

      First I'd like the point out that the law doesn't work in terms of being defined by vague analogies. If I kill someone, for example, you can't argue from that using a really clever argument that it'd be unjust to convict me of murder because it's just like if I'd driven a car and accidentally squished someone's daffodils which is totally a civil matter so there your honor I rest my case checkmate.

      But to address your specific argument: No, there are multiple differences. It's usually impossible to legally make the government do anything or hold it responsible for anything. Also we're not talking about murder, which is a criminal matter, but civil law, particularly the bits relating to liability and damages and so forth.

      More critically the ruling here isn't that the registrar is at fault merely because the copyright violator bought a domain from them, it's that the registrar failed to act after they were told that their customer was using the service they provided to cause (what the law says is) harm to the plaintiff.

      So if the law was based on vague analogies, your analogy would still fail to sway a judge. You'd have to extend your analogy to a set of circumstances where a private road owner owns a road and continues to allow a lunatic who keeps murderizing other people driving along the same road to drive along it even after it's been pointed out that this is happening and that the person in question is cackling loudly and saying "I'm still going to murder people on this here private road, take that Hilary Rosen and Metallica!", and where it'd literally take merely an email to the right employee of the road owner, who would spend literally only one minute doing whatever is necessary to remove the lunatic because that private road owner bans people all the time.

      And in that analogy, it's probably the case that the courts would rule that the road owner is at least partially responsible, in civil courts, when the families of the victims are suing for damages, for what happened.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  3. Why stop there? by johannesg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I mean, why not just take the entire top-level domain down if there is an infringing page somewhere? Since we are going for the disproportional response, we might as well take it all the way...

  4. 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.