Crowell & Moring LLP, a law firm with offices in the US, Brussels and the UK released a white paper that describes the legal mechanisms available to copyright holders in the EU to prevent ISP systems from being used for online file sharing. Published by the US based Copyright Alliance, the paper provides a summary of European laws which have been used to grant injunctive relief to prevent online file sharing including injunctions requiring ISPs to implement DNS blocking. The paper also summarizes the recent ECJ Scarlet case which dealt with the power of EU courts to grant orders requiring ISPs to filter peer to peer traffic over their networks.
Posts Tagged ‘ISP Liability’
DNS blocking and filtering in the EU
December 14th, 2011Rethinking notice and notice after C-32
April 4th, 2011Canada’s last three copyright bills, C-60, C-61 and C-32, attempted to curb illegal online file sharing by requiring ISPs to forward notices of claimed infringements to customers. Canada’s ISPs had advocated for this “notice and notice” process claiming it was effective. However, they never produced any empirical evidence or studies to back up their claims.
The fallout from iiNet: markets and laws failing in face of net piracy
February 8th, 2010Last week the Federal Court of Australia released its important decision in the iiNet case. As many commentators have pointed out, the court declined to require Australia’s ISPs to disconnect those of its subscribers who are repeat copyright infringers.
In the course of reaching this decision, the court made a number of important rulings about the liability arising from the use of BitTorrent networks including the following:
- Seeders and peers that make music available for sharing are infringers under Australia’s making available right.
- The transmission of copyright files as part of a BitTorrent swarm constitutes a transmission (communication) to the public by participants in the stream and is infringing.
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