This case is about the liability of an operator of a search engine that offered information on houses for sale. The search engine provided deep links into the websites of the brokers that houses for sale. The brokers argued that these deep links were communications to the public of their copyright-protected materials. The Court of Appeals rejected the claim for copyright infringement. While the brokers had implemented technical measures to prevent deep links from functioning, deep linking to their materials did not constitute a communication to the public of their works.
This case deals with the liability of an operator of a search engine for MP3-files stored on other locations on the Internet. The Court of Appeals held the search engine operator liable for systematically and structurally referring to unauthorized communications to the public of copyright protected MP3-files.
The Dutch Supreme Court confirmed a Court of Appeals decision holding that even when a hosting provider itself does not commit a tort by refusing to delete defamatory information on a website, the hosting provider can still act unlawfully by not providing personal data of the author of that information to the person harmed by the information. Lower courts in later cases have applied this standard to service providers in cases of copyright infringement.
This law implemented the E-Commerce Directive into Dutch law, including an almost verbatim implementation of the limitations on liability of Articles 12 to 14 of the Directive. It added a new article to the Dutch Civil Code (DCC) in a section that deals with Dutch tort law. Section 6:196c DCC lists the limitations on liability subsections (1) to (4). Section 6:196c(5) indicates that the limitations on liability do not preclude the possibility of injunctions. The instruction to EU Member States that they shall not impose general monitoring obligations (Article 15 of the E-Commerce Directive) did not lead to changes in the DCC.
KaZaA offered peer-to-peer file sharing software that could be used to share all kinds of computer files, including music files. The KaZaA-network was a decentralized network that made use of so called “supernodes” that mediated communication between KaZaA-users. Collective rights management organization Buma/Stemra had argued that KaZaA’s software was used to infringe on copyrights on musical works. After failed negotiations on a licensing-deal, the District Court had ordered KaZaA to take measures to prevent the sharing of music files through KaZaA’s software. However, on appeal, the Court of Appeals of Amsterdam held that KaZaA was unable to take such measures. In an obiter dictum, the Court of Appeals noted that KaZaA, by offering its software, did not infringe on copyrights. If copyrights were infringed, then it...