Interesting article just released on CNET:
"The European Union's highest court says social networks cannot be forced to monitor users just to stop piracy.
The European Court of Justice ruled today that forcing social networks to install monitoring systems just to see if people are illegally downloading copyrighted material creates a "complicated" and "costly" burden on the sites for little or no upside. The court was also concerned about the privacy of user data."
Might re-spark the whole origin debate again.
Source: http://news.cnet.com...s/?tag=mncol;1n
EU court: Social networks can't be forced to monitor users
Débuté par
Vendrium
, févr. 16 2012 05:22
Retour en haut
#2
Posté 16 février 2012 - 05:58
billy the squid
-
- Members
- 4 669 messages
Thanks, interesting. But, it is unlikely to have an effect on the Origin issue as that is directly between the publisher and the user, there is no intermediary which would, as was asserted here by the claimant, to in effect have a fiduciray duty to moniter the activities of its users, even though they have no relationship with either the publisher or the end user.
Essentially a ruling to make intermediary sites responsible would extend the duty of care in a tortious sense beyond those which are directly interacting with one another. Ie: For negligence to take place in the observation of pirated material there must be a duty of care in the first place, which there currently isn't.
Although those sites will be called upon to act and obliged to act if notified of breaches of copyright. It's more of a passive responsibility. Which is why copyright holders are attempting to push the burden onto others, as currently the burden is on them to take action and police any copyright breaches, not the host site. Which would reduce their costs and target not only the end user for copyright infringement, but also whomever hosted the offending material and did not take it down, despite not being given notice of the offending nature of the material.
Very heavy shift in legislative responsibility, I'm glad it was dismissed.
Essentially a ruling to make intermediary sites responsible would extend the duty of care in a tortious sense beyond those which are directly interacting with one another. Ie: For negligence to take place in the observation of pirated material there must be a duty of care in the first place, which there currently isn't.
Although those sites will be called upon to act and obliged to act if notified of breaches of copyright. It's more of a passive responsibility. Which is why copyright holders are attempting to push the burden onto others, as currently the burden is on them to take action and police any copyright breaches, not the host site. Which would reduce their costs and target not only the end user for copyright infringement, but also whomever hosted the offending material and did not take it down, despite not being given notice of the offending nature of the material.
Very heavy shift in legislative responsibility, I'm glad it was dismissed.
