European Court of Justice Sets Criteria for Balancing Privacy Rights and Copyrights in the Social Networking Context
(Information society — Copyright — Internet — Hosting service provider — Processing of information stored on an online social networking platform — Introducing a system for filtering that information in order to prevent files being made available which infringe copyright — No general obligation to monitor stored information).
On those grounds, the Court (Third Chamber) hereby rules:
Directives:
– 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (Directive on electronic commerce);
– 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society; and
– 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights,
read together and construed in the light of the requirements stemming from the protection of the applicable fundamental rights, must be interpreted as precluding a national court from issuing an injunction against a hosting service provider which requires it to install a system for filtering:
– information which is stored on its servers by its service users;
– which applies indiscriminately to all of those users;
– as a preventative measure;
– exclusively at its expense; and
– for an unlimited period,
which is capable of identifying electronic files containing musical, cinematographic or audio-visual work in respect of which the applicant for the injunction claims to hold intellectual property rights, with a view to preventing those works from being made available to the public in breach of copyright.
