(prepared by Swiss Institute of Comparative Law for Council of Europe)
This is one of series of country reports prepared for the Council of Europe in 2015. Other countries' reports, and responses from national governments, are available here. The studies undertake to present the laws and, in so far as information is easily available, the practices concerning the filtering, blocking and takedown of illegal content on the internet.
(1) In both cases, the claimant asked the court to find the communication service providers (cable network companies) liable for copyright infringement committed by its users, who downloaded infringing software via peer to peer networks. (2) The court found that the respondent is an electronic communication service provider, who only transmits the electronic communication signals, does not control the content of data and therefore, enjoys an exemption from liability established by the Law on Information Society Services. The claim against the service provider was dismissed.
The law established specific requirements applicable to public electronic communication and hosting service providers. The law grants jurisdiction to law enforcement entities to issue mandatory orders to the service providers to suspend provision of their services, to retain data collected during provision of services, in cases when they are used for criminal activities.
(1) Applicants sought the court to declare information disseminated on a website as false, offending honour and dignity and business reputation and to adjudge non-pecuniary damages. (2) The court ruled that according to the Law on Information Society Services the intermediary has no obligation to monitor the information which he transmits or stores or to actively seek facts or circumstances indicating illegal activities, but after receiving information about the illegal activities or storing illegally acquired, created, modified, or used information, intermediaries are obliged to take active actions under the law. Since the defendant received the applicant’s notification about unlawful data being hosted at the service provider’s website, but acted passively and did not take any action to evaluate the report and thus...
(1) The court explained that claim against an information society service provider for removal of illegal information can be made regardless of whether he is a passive intermediary (when his activity is of technical, automatic, and passive nature), or actively collects information about the service recipients. This distinction is relevant only for determining the liability of the service provider. If service provider plays an active role so that it has knowledge or control of the hosted data, such service provide can be held liable for dissemination of unlawful information, and limitation of liability which is applicable to hosting intermediaries, does not apply to such active service provider. (2) The court also clarified that take down requests must be resolved even if the service recipient is unknown or does not...
(1) The case focused on a take down request against a service provider that hosted a website dedicated to publishing consumers’ complaints. The claimant requested to disable publication of a complaint, which, according to claimant, was false. Although the website operator implemented a procedure, which allowed publication of complaints only after their approval, the court recognised the manager of the website to be a hosting service provider. (2) The court decided that although the service provider refused to comply with the take down request, a claim in court for removal of unlawful information may be directed against the service provider even if service provider has no liability for the information published. It is for the court to make a final determination if the information is unlawful and order the claimant to...