Supreme Court, Civil Chamber, Asociación de Internautas v. SGAE, 773/2009

holding the defendant liable for hosting a third party gripe site and awarding 36,000 Euros in damages to plaintiffs; the defendant could not benefit from the hosting exemption as it was deemed to know about the defamatory contents of the gripe site; the defendant argued that, according to the language of the hosting exemption as transposed into Spanish law (art. 16 LSSICE), actual knowledge only exists when there has been a prior decision declaring the illegal nature of the third party contents; the court held instead that Art. 16 LSSICE must be construed openly, as otherwise it would unreasonably limit the possibilities of obtaining actual knowledge of the illegal content hosted and thus would not be in accordance with the eCommerce Directive.