Tribunale di Torino [Tribunal of Turin], Civil, IP Specialized Section, Delta TV Programs S.rl. v. YouTube et al

Rejecting Delta TV’s request for interim injunction against YouTube for copyright infringement on certain South American soap operas which had been uploaded by YouTube users. Delta TV sued Google and YouTube and filed for an interim injunction asking the Court to order Google to remove the infringing videos, prohibiting further violations and imposing a penalty of EUR 1,000 per day for each violation of the Court’s order. However, the Court rejected the request on the basis that (i) there is no obligation on the part of Google and YouTube, as hosting providers, to assess the actual ownership of the copyrights in videos uploaded by individual users, (ii) the only liability hypothetically attributable to Google and YouTube relates to cases where they are specifically informed of the unlawfulness of the uploaded videos and have not removed them (while in this case the videos were removed as soon as the specific URLs were provided by Delta TV), and (iii) there do not exist sufficient evidence to consider Google and YouTube as “active hosts” (thus not shielded by the hosting defence of the E-Commerce Decree). The Court further clarified that in order to trigger the obligation of the hosting provider to remove the infringing videos, it is necessary for the copyright owner to specify the exact URLs where the videos are accessible online.