(1) implementing the InfoSoc Directive (2001/29) mandatory exception for temporary acts of reproduction which are transient or incidental, have no independent economic significance, and are an integral and essential part of a technological process whose sole purpose is to enable (a) a transmission in a network among third parties by an intermediary, or (b) a lawful use (art. 31.1); (2) providing that copyright owners may ask for injunctions, where appropriate, against an intermediary whose services are resorted to by a third party to infringe copyright, even where the intermediary’s activity is not infringing in itself (arts. 138, 139.1.h, 141.6); (3) creating an administrative body -- the Second Section of the Copyright Commission (CPI) -- which orders injunctions against information society services who infringe on...
holding YouTube not liable for copyright infringement; the plaintiff had not properly identified the allegedly infringing videos; YouTube met the conditions required by the hosting safe harbor and thus was exempted from liability; YouTube cannot be enjoined generally to prevent copyright infringing uploads. see also CIS blog
Holding the owner of a website liable for third party defamatory comments posted to website’s fora; the defendant had some control mechanisms in place what failed to prevent the postings; the appellate court was right in finding that the defendant had actual knowledge of the illegal content, and that it failed to diligently remove the content; hence the defendant cannot rely on the hosting exemption from liability
finding a website operator guilty of a criminal copyright infringement; the court found that a website providing links to infringing content hosted in P2P networks engaged in a communication to the public of those contents; the court held that the activity was not sheltered by the linking safe harbor of the Spanish law; the website operator was sentenced to 18 months of prison (which most likely will not be effective, as is usual in sentences below 2 years); the decision also dealt with the civil liability arising from the crime and thus damages were awarded to the right owners who brought the action.
holding Google and its CEO are not liable for the search engine’s links to pieces of news containing false accusations against an individual; defendants are shielded from liability by Art. 17 of the Spanish Information Society Services Act, which sets forth a safe harbor for information location tools; notices sent by the aggrieved person were not enough to trigger actual knowledge because the illegal character of the information was not obvious by itself and thus Google did not need to take the links down to benefit from the linking safe harbor.