Internet Service Provider Liability - The Swiss Perspective

Switzerland does not have a concrete legal framework dealing with rights and obligations of ISPs; however, legal doctrine and practice apply similar principles as stated in the E-Commerce Directive of the EU. The liability of ISPs depends on the “closeness” to the content. Whereas in cases of solely transmitting services the risk of liability for illegal information is remote and the duty of ISPs is limited to a take-down, content, host and link providers (in cases of moder- ated newsgroups) can become liable if the information made available is not controlled.

Welfare Lobby Groups responding to Globalisation: A Comparison of the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) and the UK Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG)

The past decade has witnessed a period of intense economic globalisation. The growing significance of international trade, investment, production and financial flows appears to be curtailing the autonomy of individual nation states. In particular, globalisation appears to be encouraging, if not demanding, a decline in social spending and standards. However, many authors believe that this thesis ignores the continued impact of national political and ideological pressures and lobby groups on policy outcomes. In particular, it has been argued that national welfare consumer and provider groups remain influential defenders of the welfare state. For example, US aged care groups are considered to be particularly effective defenders of social security pensions. According to this argument, governments engaged in welfare retrenchment may experience considerable electoral backlash (Pierson 1996; Mishra 1999). Yet, it is also noted that governments can take action to reduce the impact of such groups by reducing their funding, and their access to policy-making and consultation processes. These actions are then justified on the basis of removing potential obstacles to economic competitiveness (Pierson 1994; Melville 1999).

Rollout of CampusContent

CampusContent (CC) is a DFG-funded competence center for eLearning with its own portal. It links content and people who support sharing and reuse of high quality learning materials and codified pedagogical know-how, such as learning objectives, pedagogical scenarios, recommended learning activities, and learning paths. The heart of the portal is a distributed repository whose contents are linked to various other CampusContent portals. Integrated into each portal are user-friendly tools for designing reusable learning content, exercises, and templates for learning units and courses. Specialized authoring tools permit the configuration, adaption, and automatic generation of interactive Flash animations using Adobe's Flexbuilder technology. More coarse-grained content components such as complete learning units and entire courses, in which contents and materials taken from the repository are embedded, can be created with XML-based authoring tools. Open service interface allow the deep or shallow integration of the portal provider's preferred authoring and learning tools. The portal is built on top of the Enterprise Content Management System Alfresco, which comes with social networking functionality that has been adapted to accommmodate collaboration, sharing and reuse within trusted communities of practice.

Kontent i Pravo v. Masterhost Presidium of the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation, Judgment of 23 December 2008, Nr. 10962/08 Translation and Comment

This Judgment by the Presidium of the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation can be considered as a landmark ruling for Internet Service Provider’s (ISP) liability. The Court stipulates for the first time concise principles under which circumstances an ISP shall be exempt from liability for transmitting copyright infringing content. But due to the legislation on ISP liability in the Russian Federation it depends on the type of information which rules of liability apply to ISP. As far as a violation of intellectual property rights is claimed, the principles given now by the Supreme Arbitration Court are applicable, which basically follow the liability limitations of the so called EU E-Commerce Directive. But, furthermore, preventive measures that are provided in service provider contracts to suppress a violation through the use of services should be taken into account as well. On the other hand, as far as other information is concerned the limitations of the respective Information Law might be applicable which stipulates different liability requirements. This article gives a translation of the Supreme Arbitration Court’s decision as well as a comment on its key rulings with respect to the legal framework and on possible consequences for practice.

Liability for Copyright Infringements on the Internet: Host Providers (Content Providers) - The Geman Approach

Copyright infringements on the Internet affect all types of media which can be used online: films, computer games, audio books, music, software, etc. For example, according to German studies, 90% of all copyright violations affecting film works take place on the Internet. This storage space is made available to such infringers, as well as to others whose intentions are legal, by hosting providers. To what extent do hosting providers have a duty of care for their contribution to the copyright infringements of third parties, i.e. their users? What duties of care can be reasonably expected of hosting providers to prevent such infringements? These questions have been heavily debated in Germany, and German courts have developed extensive case law. This article seeks to examine these questions by assessing German jurisprudence against its EU law background.

TV Signal Delivery to Cable Operators and DTH Platform Operators

The paper discusses new business models of transmission of television programs in the context of definitions of broadcasting and retransmission. Typically the whole process of supplying content to the end user has two stages: a media service provider supplies a signal assigned to a given TV channel to the cable operators and satellite DTH platform operators (dedicated transmission), and cable operators and satellite DTH platform operators transmit this signal to end users. In each stage the signals are encoded and are not available for the general public without the intervention of cable/platform operators. The services relating to the supply and transmission of the content are operated by different business entities: each earns money separately and each uses the content protected by copyright. We should determine how to define the actions of the entity supplying the signal with the TV program directly to the cable/digital platform operator and the actions of the entity providing the end user with the signal. The author criticizes the approach presented in the Chellomedia and Norma rulings, arguing that they lead to a significant level of legal uncertainty, and poses the basic questions concerning the notion of “public” in copyright.

Evaluation of the Role of Access Providers Discussion of Dutch Pirate Bay Case Law and Introducing Principles on Directness, Effectiveness, Costs, Relevance, and Time

Internet service providers (ISPs) play a pivotal role in contemporary society because they provide access to the Internet. The primary task of ISPs – to blindly transfer information across the network – has recently come under pressure, as has their status as neutral third parties. Both the public and the private sector have started to require ISPs to interfere with the content placed and transferred on the Internet as well as access to it for a variety of purposes, including the fight against cybercrime, digital piracy, child pornography, etc. This expanding list necessitates a critical assessment of the role of ISPs. This paper analyses the role of the access provider. Particular attention is paid to Dutch case law, in which access providers were forced to block The Pirate Bay. After analysing the position of ISPs, we will define principles that can guide the decisions of ISPs whether to take action after a request to block access based on directness, effectiveness, costs, relevance and time.

Bittorent Loses Again: A Recent Lithuanian BitTorrent Case and What It Means for the Construction of the E-commerce Directive

This article first discusses a recent Lithuanian BitTorrent case, Linkomanija, with its shortcomings and perspectives. It then compares the outcomes of the Lithuanian case with recent court practice in Scandinavian countries (the Swedish Pirate Bay and Finnish Finreactor cases). Finally, it poses some questions as to whether BitTorrent sites should be qualified as hosting services under Article 14 of the EU E-commerce Directive (2000/31/EC) and whether the application of the limited liability standard, as developed by the Court of Justice of the European Union, would be reasonable for BitTorrent file-sharing services in general.