Copyright filtering systems illegal – CJEU
16 February 2012
James Nurton, London
Internet companies have welcomed today’s Court of Justice ruling in Sabam v Netlog, which stated clearly that service providers cannot be required to install a content-filtering system
Jan Maarten Willems, chief financial officer of Massive Media (which owns social media site Netlog), told Managing IP he was "more than pleased" with today's judgment. "It is a very good decision for the freedom of the internet, and fully in line with the Court's case law in eBay v L'Oréal and Sabam v Scarlet," he said.
The Court's ruling addressed a question referred from Belgium regarding the interpretation of the E-commerce, Copyright and Enforcement Directives.
The dispute arose in February 2009 when Belgian collecting society Sabam asked Netlog to pay a fee for musical and audio-visual works that were being made available on its site.
In June of that year, it sought an injunction to stop Netlog making available the copyrighted works. But Netlog...
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