(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) Importantly this case tested the scope of the protection afforded to intermediaries under the E-Commerce Directive as implemented into Swedish law. The Court concluded that, due to the nature of its operation, The Pirate Bay could not rely on the protection afforded to some intermediaries under the E-Commerce Directive. (2) The case, is also interesting as it considered whether a Swedish court could claim jurisdiction where part of the relevant conduct, in a copyright violation, had taken place abroad. It was clear that some of The Pirate Bay’s users (i.e. the ones committing the actual copyright infringements – the principal offense) were located outside Sweden at the time of committing the copyright infringements. The relevant law makes clear that an offense is regarded as committed where the criminal act took...
The matter related to whether the failure to remove certain content could result in criminal liability. The Court concluded that it had not been obvious that the content was illegal and that therefore there was no obligation to remove the content under general criminal law principles.