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Belgian Court Says ISPs Must Now Be Copyright Police
from the focus-on-the-beer-and-chocolate dept
There's long been a push from the entertainment industry to make ISPs responsible for policing copyright infringement on their networks. Despite the willingness of some ISPs -- such as AT&T to do this, it's really not a very good idea because it simply shouldn't be an ISP's job to determine what is and isn't infringing material. A recent story out of Australia illustrates what can happen when ISPs aren't protected by safe harbor laws: they do things like delete all their users' multimedia files from web hosting accounts, regardless of whether they're illegal or not. Now, a Belgian court has ruled that ISPs there must block illegal file-sharing on their networks, and has given one provider six months to implement some sort of filtering technology or face daily fines (never mind that that sort of thing never really works). The RIAA's international equivalent, the IFPI is, of course, delighted, and says that since the decision is based on an interpretation of EU copyright law, it could set a precedent across the continent. The group's chairman says it hopes it will do just that "around the world", though last we checked, Belgian court rulings don't apply in many countries, such as the US, which has safe harbor laws -- for the time being, anyway. On another note, is Belgium becoming to internet copyright law what Marshall, Texas is to patent lawsuits? First the ruling that Google can't link to Belgian newspapers, now this.
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More copyright headaches
Brandon Watts
Criteo Evangelist
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Yup
This is a terrible decision, the ISPs cannot regulate what is illegal or not, nor should they have to. I suppose Belgium should tell auto makers they are responsible for how people drive, they can use cars to ride to a bank and rob it,drink and drive, etc... tell phone companies they have to regulate what people talk about.
Maybe they should make the RIAA hand over all private records, "not albums" , transactions, bank accounts, etc...to make sure they are not ripping people off. Once again RIAA, you stole in the 70s and knew it, got caught, now you think everyone is a criminal except you.
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Re: Yup
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Firstly, the assertion by the IFPI that a ruling in a lower Court in Belgium sets an EU wide precedent is ludicrous. Only the European Court of Justice can do that.
Furthermore, each State has its own implementing measures for the EU Directive (it isn't a Regulation), this varies country by country. The Belgium decision would only set precedent for that countries Statute.
Secondly, I know vicarious liability is excluded in the UK's implementation of the Copyright Directive by Sections 97a and 191(j)(a) which requires a service provider to have "actual knowledge of another person using their service to infringe copyright". So unless the ISP is specifically informed about infringement they won't have to do anything.
The UK legislation also has common carrier provisions, I can't recall them right now but it's just copyright Nazi propaganda that this will speak for the entire EU. It probably won't even speak for the rest of Belgium unless it gets to Appellant. level.
Also the ISP in Belgium is the damn government!
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Re:
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This makes it express that the Directive will not apply to ISP's. I hope this decision gets appealed to the ECJ because it is incorrect.
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No worries
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Re: No worries
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Re: Re: No worries
I wonder if any of those missiles will have "RIAA" stenciled on them.
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Re:
I know you're talking out of your ass on that one, which casts serious doubts on the rest of your post...
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