(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 report for Andorra is also available in French on the site.] 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.
Part VIII (§§35-41) of the Electronic Transactions Act deals with the issue of ‘Liability of Intermediaries and Service Providers’. The statutory provisions generally employ a ‘mere conduit’ approach, and do not require intermediaries to actively monitor electronic records and transmissions. The legislation also provides for a takedown notification procedure, where aggrieved persons can issue a notification of ‘unlawful activity’ to the intermediary. Intermediaries are also not liable for wrongful takedowns in response to notifications. The legislation also allows for the government to establish subsidiary regulations for a Code of Practice to which intermediaries must comply. However, it is understood that no such Code has been yet established.
A civil judge partially admitted the claim of the model and tv host Natalia Denegri and ordered Google to "deindex" all the images and videos related to the widely known "Coppola case" for being harmful to her image and honor. Denegri got media attention in the mid-1990s for being linked to a tv scandal known as the "Coppola case". In her lawsuit against Google, she requested the right to be forgotten. The plaintiff acknowledged that she was part of an important case that had public implications. However, after twenty years, the information still continues to appear in the search results, claimed Denegri, although it "belongs to a past that she wants to forget" and "it is old, irrelevant, unnecessary and obsolete, without any journalistic pertinence". In its answer, Google denied that any damage had been caused to...
The Supreme Court of Justice overturned a judgment of the Civil Court of Appeals, which ordered Google to remove a search suggestion that involved the General Secretary of a public university and to refrain from recommending it, since the content affected the plaintiff’s honor. Also, the lower court ordered to cease the dissemination of certain URLs when a search is made with the plaintiff’s first and last name, as well as to delete the content stored as a caché version of those URLs, all within ten days, under the warning of applying a financial penalty. In turn, the Supreme Court declared that “it is necessary to remember that freedom of expression has a preeminent place within the framework of our constitutional freedoms". It also pointed out that the lower court ruling “implies an act of censorship” because “it...
Expte. N° 40500/2009/CSl y otro, Cita Online: Id SAIJ: FA17000042, September 17, 2017
The Supreme Court ratified its holding in “Rodríguez”: intermediaries are liable if they fail to act after acquiring actual knowledge about the unlawful nature of specific third-party infringing content. Moreover, the Court reiterated that thumbnails are merely filtered links that should not be treated differently from text search results. Further, search engines do not “capture”, “reproduce” or “commercialize” images under articles 31 of the Law 11.723 and 53 of the Civil and Commercial Code. Even if they did, in an extended opinion, Dr. Rosenkratz added that manifest consent to the storage of one’s image in a website implies consent to the indexation and linking of such website and its content by search engines.
Intermediary Services on the Internet. Providers’ Responsibility Guidelines
Defines “intermediaries” as the ones that carry out or facilitate transactions between third parties on the Internet, whether they offer access to, hosting, transmission, or index content, products or services created by third parties. As a general principle, the text proposes that ISPs should not be liable for the information transmitted unless they modified it, and should not have the responsibility of supervising the content. The proposal determines that ISPs should be liable if they are notified and do not erase, deindex, block or remove “flagrantly illegal content” within five days. Cases of “flagrantly illegal content” are listed: child pornography; content that incites the commission of a crime; content that may put lives or physical integrity in danger; apology for genocide, racism, or discrimination; or...