Posted, February 17, 2012 @ 13:00
The European Court of Justice has ruled that social networking websites should not be obliged to install general filtering systems to block users from illegally sharing music and film.
The court said such an obligation would not be in line with the need for a balance between protection of copyright and freedom to conduct business, as required by the EU's E-commerce directive which has been in force since 2000.
Malcolm Harbour MEP, chairman of the European Parliament's single market committee, said the decision would avoid burdening the operators of social networking sites with an unwarranted level of individual customer scrutiny.
He said: "Their job is to provide the platform, the means for their users to link up. They cannot be held to account for every detail of the way the facility is used. The law needs to tackle the individuals doing the illegal sharing, not the site they use to do it.
"If the court had taken the opposite view it would have made social networking almost impossible to administer. But operators still have an obligation to deal with serial copyright theft when it is reported to them."