The Court accepted the liability of a discussion forum provider for user comments. Unknown users posted several libelous statements on the website. The discussion provider refused to take them down, arguing that it can not establish its illegal nature. The Court hold the provider liable for an injunction to remove some statements that it found libelous (“like swine”), but rejected to grant any non-material satisfaction in money against the provider. The Court did not question the inverted wording of the Czech hosting safe harbor and readily accepted liability after concluding that hosting safe harbor was lost due to the notice from the plaintiff. see also Martin Husovec, Brief Commentary on the Prolux Case, 3 Revue pro právo a technologie (2011)
This Article is a comprehension of the lecture held at at the International Conference on “Commons, Users, Service Providers – Internet (Self-) Regulation and Copyright” which took place in Hannover, Germany, on 17/18 March 2010 on the occasion of the launch of JIPITEC. It summarizes the current issues concerning ISP liability in the Chzech Republic.
The Court in a regular domain name dispute enabled the domain name transfer against the domain name authority as a defendant arguing that the source of such an injunction is a tort law.
The Court hold an operator of a cyberlocker liable for committing a copyright infringement. As the decision came in the form of the default judgment against the operator, the grounds for the decision were not given. The plaintiff, however, claimed direct copyright infringement, arguing that loosing of the hosting safe harbor leads to communication to the public. If the Court accepted this, or some other basis for liability, is not clear. The Court obliged the defendant to pay 536.000 Czech crowns (19.507 EUR) from the title of unjust enrichment by letting the users to download the work almost 14.000 times by its default judgment. The case was appealed, but was rejected on appeal on merely procedural grounds. see also eisionline blog; Martin Husovec, Case Note on the share-rapid.cz Case, 8 Revue pro právo a technologie...
The Court upheld the criminal liability of an operator of video indexing site, which included number of copyright infringing embed links. The Court found that the defendant himself put the links on his website and hence directly infringed the copyright by communicating the works to the public. see also eisionline blog; Martin Husovec, Czech Supreme Court: Embedding is Communication to the Public, Kluwer Copyright Blog 2012
The Act implements e-Commerce Directive into Czech law incorporating mere conduit (§ 3), caching (§ 4) and hosting safe harbors (§ 5), and prohibition of general monitoring obligation (§ 6). The implementation unfortunately instead of the negative language of the Directive (“is not liable if ..”), uses a positive one (“is liable if ..”), which gives an impression that losing of safe harbors leads to establishment of the liability.