District Court of Tel-Aviv, 567-08-09, ALIS - Association for the Protection of Cinematic Works v. Rotter.net Ltd.

Influenced by the Supreme Court’s decision Hebrew University vs. Schocken, the district court in Tel-Aviv. The case involved a website which posted Links to copyrighted works which were posted without authorization. The Court examined the liability of the website for posting only the links and not the actual infringing works. The Court ruled that website could not be held directly liable for posting links to infringing works, as the posting of the links are not infringing on their own, therefore, there is no direct liability. The Court takes into consideration the recent Supreme Court decision Hebrew University vs. Schocken, and rules that in order to establish the element of actual knowledge of the infringement for Contributory Liability, there should be a notice and take down procedure. If intermediary operate a notice and take down procedure they should have a safe harbor against Contributory Liability. The court ruled a website will be found guilty of Contributory Liability only if it was provided a notice and it did not take down the infringing work in due time. The Court further elaborated that there are two cases in which, even without a notice and take down the website will be found guilty of Contributory Liability: i) the website is actively encouraging the infringing activity; ii) the website hosts a “forbidden forum” - a specific forum in a website is dedicated to infringing activity.