European Court of Justice, Belgische Vereniging van Auteurs, Componisten en Uitgevers CVBA (SABAM) v. Netlog NV, C-360/10

Document type
Court Decision
The ECJ had to decide whether a Belgian court could require Netlog, the Belgian equivalent to Facebook, to immediately cease making available works from SABAM‘s repertoire by installing a filtering system, which would oblige Netlog to actively monitor all the data of its users and to prevent future IPR-infringements. The ECJ decided that European law must be interpreted as precluding a national court from issuing an injunction against a hosting service provider which requires it to install a system for filtering: (1) information which is stored on its servers by its service users; (2) which applies indiscriminately to all of those users; (3) as a preventative measure; (4) exclusively at its expense; and (5) for an unlimited period, (6) which is capable of identifying electronic files containing musical, cinematographic or audio-visual work in respect of which the applicant for the injunction claims to hold intellectual property rights, with a view to preventing those works from being made available to the public in breach of copyright. See also Global FoE
Year
2012
Topic, claim, or defense
Copyright
Document type
Court Decision
Issuing entity
Transnational Court
Type of service provider
Host (Including Social Networks)
OSP obligation considered
Monitor or Filter
Type of law
Civil
General effect on immunity
Strengthens Immunity