holding a blog owner guilty on account of defamatory comments sent by unidentified readers; the court of appeals held that the hosting safe harbor did not apply.
holding a hosting provider not liable for hosting a website where some defamatory comments were posted; the defendant qualified for the hosting safe harbor and thus was exempted from liability.
implementing the liability limitations set forth in the eCommerce Directive; exemptions for mere conduit (art. 14) and caching (art. 15) are implemented almost verbatim; the hosting safe harbor provision (art. 16) doesn’t mention the awareness of “facts or circumstances from which the illegal activity or information is apparent”, and it appears to limit the notion of actual knowledge to specific situations (mainly the existence of a prior decision on the illegality of the hosted material), however, the Supreme Court declared that this should be read in a non-restrictive way; a specific exemption for linking is included (art. 17); no mention is made to the possibility of injunctions or to the prohibition of general monitoring obligations; some duties to cooperate with law enforcement authorities are imposed on...
(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.