Holding two webmasters of a website liable for criminal copyright infringement; the website would offer links to access, via streaming, scanned full versions of newspapers, magazines and books; the files were hosted somewhere else; the court found that the site was engaging in a communication to the public according to the criteria set out by the CJEU in Svensson; there was “new public” as the website allowed access to the contents of the print edition without the need of buying it; the Supreme Court upheld the first instance ruling handed down by the Audiencia Nacional.
In this administrative proceeding within the Spanish DPA (AEPD - Agencia Española de Protección de Datos), Google was fined in 150,000 Euros for communicating webmasters about the delisting of content based on data protection requests (Right to be Forgotten requests, based on the European and Spanish rights to cancellation and opposition). Building upon the guidelines issued by the Article 29 Working Party, the agency decided that a search engine does not have the legal obligation to inform webmasters and that the communication could render the request to be delisted inefficient, by allowing, among other things, the publisher to change the URL delisted or to create lists of URLs subject to de-indexed. When considering that Google would only inform that a URL was delisted based on the European data protection...
Holding the owner of a website – a political party’s local association – liable for third party defamatory comments posted to a website’s forum; the defendant carried out a moderation of the forum, but failed to prevent the obviously defamatory messages from being posted, while other comments favorable to the complainant were rejected; the appellate court was right in finding that the defendant had actual knowledge of the illegal content; the court cites the ECtHR case Delfi v Estonia.
Holding Google Spain SL liable for damages for failing to remove links to personal information after a “right to be forgotten” request by the claimant; damages were awarded following art. 19 of the Spanish Data Protection Law, which implements art. 23 of the Data Protection Directive (95/46) that orders Member States to “provide that any person who has suffered damage as a result of an unlawful processing operation or of any act incompatible with the national provisions adopted pursuant to this Directive is entitled to receive compensation from the controller for the damage suffered.”; the court rejected the defendant’s contention that Google Spain – the local subsidiary – is not the data controller and thus lacks standing; however, in other cases, another Chamber of the court concedes Google Spain’s lack of standing...
(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.