In particular, the CJEU was asked to balance several fundamental rights in actions against online intermediaries for copyright infringements committed by third parties. In SABAM v. Scarlet (case C-70/10; see also SABAM v. Netlog, case C-360/10), the CJEU defined the outer limits for “injunctions against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe a copyright or related right” (Art. 8(3) of the 2001/29 Copyright Directive). On 27 March 2014, the Court of Justice in UPC Telekabel (case C- 314/12) went further in delineating the requirements for copyright injunctions against online access providers and the implementation of filtering measures.

In the last years, the ECtHR ruled three times on the proportionality of some interferences with the freedom of expression online resulting from the protection and enforcement of copyright. One case (Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi v. Sweden, 18 Febr. 2013) involves the operators of the infringing website The Pirate Bay. In Ashby Donald v. France (10 Jan. 2013), the question was whether the sanctions imposed by the French courts on the managers of a website containing photographs of fashion shows were passing the test of proportionality for restricting freedom of expression. In a March 11, 2014 decision (Yaman Akdeniz v. Turkey), the ECtHR considers as inadmissible the request made by the user of musical websites to which access has been blocked.

Here are a list of questions for you to consider at the light of (at least) the two decisions UPC Telekabel and Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi v. Sweden:

• What are the fundamental rights that are most often referred to by the Court in Luxembourg and by the Court in Strasbourg?
• Is Article 10 of the ECHR applicable to the Internet in the same way as it is applicable to other means of communication?
• Does the protection of property as a fundamental right play a role in the balancing made by the CJEU and the ECtHR?
• Is it possible to rely on other fundamental rights to support the view that copyright is a fundamental/human right?
• Do you see a difference in the way the balancing is done by the CJEU and the ECtHR?
• What are the implications of a reasoning based on the balancing of fundamental right?
• As a result of those decisions, does copyright move from the sphere of private law to the realm of public law?

You do not necessarily have to respond to all those questions, you can select a few of them. What is important: your text should be concise, well-structured and to the point. Also it should flow well.

You do not have to be too … balanced in your response!

(You might as well take into account this additional question: Do you think the decision Akdeniz is completely in line with the previous case law of the ECtHR?).

As  readers will promptly recollect, this case concerned interpretation of Article 5(3) of the Brussels I Regulation in the context of alleged online copyright infringement cases.

The questions referred by the French Court of Cassation read as follows:

1.      Is Article 5(3) of … [the Regulation] to be interpreted as meaning that, in the event of an alleged infringement of copyright committed by means of content placed online on a website,

–      the person who considers that his rights have been infringed has the option of bringing an action to establish liability before the courts of each Member State in the territory of which content placed online is or has been accessible, in order to obtain compensation solely in respect of the damage suffered on the territory of the Member State before which the action is brought,

or

–      does that content also have to be, or to have been, directed at the public located in the territory of that Member State, or must some other clear connecting factor be present?

2.      Is the answer to Question 1 the same if the alleged infringement of copyright results, not from the placing of dematerialised content online, but, as in the present case, from the online sale of a material carrier medium which reproduces that content?

The CJEU replied that Article 5(3) must be interpreted as meaning that, in the context of an action for alleged copyright infringement brought following unauthorised reproduction and online distribution of copies of a work, the courts of a particular Member State have jurisdiction to establish liability and award the damages occurred therein, if the website through which the infringing copies are distributed is accessible from that territory.

As Advocate General (AG) Jääskinen acknowledged in his Opinion (here), Pinckney was the first case concerning the criteria for localising the place where the damage occurs in the event of an alleged online infringement on an unregistered IP right.

In reaching its decision, the CJEU departed significantly from the Opinion of the AG. In doing so, it also marked a discontinuity from recent case law (notably, Joined Cases C‑585/08 and C‑144/09 Peter Pammer, Case C-5/11 Titus Donner (here), and Case C-173/11 Sportradar (here and here) which employed the notion of ‘intention to target’ in the context of online infringements. The stance taken by the Court is not particularly shocking, as departure from the ‘intention to target’ approach may be justified on consideration that (as recalled by the Court itself) “Article 5(3) lays down, as the sole condition, that a harmful event has occurred or may occur.”

Following the decision in Pinckney, the jurisdictional treatment of alleged online copyright infringements is more akin to that of alleged breaches of personality rights, rather than registered IP rights. This conclusion re-states the approach taken following the 1994 decision in Case C-68/93 Fiona Shevill with the additional result that the principle of territoriality, which still governs (is supposed to govern?) copyright, appears significantly diluted, at least in relation to the special rule of jurisdiction laid down in Article 5(3) of the Brussels I Regulation.

The criterion of accessibility eventually adopted by the CJEU was rejected by the AG, on consideration that it “would encourage forum shopping, contrary to the case law of the Court, which has consistently attempted to curb that risk in its interpretation of Regulation No 44/2001.” This fear appears exaggerated, especially considering that a national court will be able to award only the damages occurred in the territory of that particular Member State.

In line with other recent decisions (eg the twin decisions on ISP filtering Case C-70/10 Scarlet and Case C-360/10 Netlog, on which see here, here, here), also in Pinckney the actual response of the Court was overly fact-specific:

While there is little doubt that its meaning ought to be intended broadly, it is questionable whether the last word on jurisdiction in cases of alleged online copyright infringement has yet been said.

Similarly to another reference for a preliminary ruling concerning filtering and currently pending before the CJEU (Case C-314/12 UPC Telekable Wien, on which see here), it is not excluded that new references on jurisdiction in online copyright infringement cases will flourish.

There is no need to think too far ahead in the future, though.Case C-441/13 Pez Edjduk (on which see here) is currently a reference for a preliminary ruling from Austria which seeks clarification on the interpretation of Article 5(3) in the context of a case of alleged online copyright infringement. The question referred by the national court is centred around the (now infamous) notion of ‘intention to target’ … Does that mean that ‘intention to target’ is dead, long live ‘intention to target’?

Everybody has heard about the largest online strike of last week, with the blackout of Wikipedia and Reddit for instance. This was clearly a tactical victory for the large Silicon Valley companies over Hollywood and the old media which had pushed hard for the adoption by the U.S. Congres of the two draft laws, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act).

It is good that online citizens remain alert about the risks that States can generate for the online communities. It is good to fight for the freedom of expression and the freedom of meeting that Internet definitely facilitates. Internet is clearly an engine for democracy. No discussion. However, this does not mean that Internet should remain immune from any regulation. (For the libertarian spirit that pervades the Internet, any rule of law that touches on the online world is immediately seen as an attempt to kill freedoms; at the same time, this idealistic vision of the Internet wrongly minimises the role that private entities play in channeling information on the network).

To compare SOPA and PIPA with censorship in China, as some have done, is not intellectually honest. Activists would be wiser to refer to censorship with nuance, and should be more cautious when large corporations, such as Google and Facebook, are crying for censorship (History is full of examples where media empires have put forward the risk of censorship to cover-up their will to maximise commercial gain unfettered).

However, to propose domain name blocking as a solution to online piracy beyond the borders, as PIPA/SOPA did, is very probably not a good solution. It is clearly not a good signal: it might justify the use of this tool by repressive regimes whose goal is to restrict freedom of expression. That said, we should not behave as if it domain name blocking is completely ignored in the regulation of online communication under democratic regimes: the UK, Norway and many other countries have allowed some form of blocking of child pornography sites through ISPs (see the reminder by J. Gapper, Halt the Silicon Valley histrionics, FT, 19/1/2012). A High Court in the UK has even imposed to British Telecom and other ISPs the use of a blocking technology against a foreign site which committed repeat copyright infringement. Such a targeted blocking, as long as it remains proportional, is allowed by the courts in Europe (see the Scarlet decision of the European Court of Justice, C-70/10). The claim that, by allowing domain name blocking, SOPA and PIPA would break down the architecture of the Internet thus appears without ground. However, domain name blocking is not a good solution: if it is widely used, it could slow down domain-name resolution for the Internet. It could as well prompt the use of programs that would redirect domains (one of these programs, called “DeSOPA”, has apparently already been developed). More importantly, the concept of a universal addressing system, on which Internet is built, could be degraded (see P. Rosenzweig, Online Piracy and Internet Security: Congress Asks the Right Question but Offers the Wrong Answers, 17/01/2012).

Even more importantly, the short term solution of DNS blocking might postpone the need to revise the specifications of the Internet so as to reduce the risks of vulnerability and security breaches — and maybe of widespread piracy. As clearly shown by P. Rosenzweig (see above), “the current protocols of the Internet” — including the Internet Protocol or IP address which translates a domain name (www.ipdigit.eu) into a number string (“96.564.268.144″) — “do not have an “authentification” function”. In other terms, those accessing a website can never be sure that an intermediary (a governmental agency, an ISP, a pirate, …) has not hijacked the traffic. We all know cases involving spoofing which allows to redirect an Internet user to a phony website (be it a false bank, charity or IT department). The engineers responsible for defining the infrastructure of the Internet (within the Internet Engineering Task Force or IETF) know this vulnerability of the Internet addressing system and are trying to remedy it. Vint Cerf , known as the one of the fathers of the Internet, “acknowledges that he and co-founder Bob Kahn did not think enough about security when they build the framework for the web”. For Mr Cerf, there might have been “a faulty initial design – with net protocols that rely on trust and freely allow anonymity”. In an interview reported by the Financial Times (12/10/2012), Mr Cerf is quoted as saying: “I would have put a much stronger focus on authenticity or authentification — where did this email come from, what device am I talking to… those things are elements that would make a big difference”.

Today, Mr Cerf is working for Google and has signed the petition against SOPA and PIPA. Why? For a variety of reasons probably. One of the reasons might be that the wrong answers proposed in those bills, i. e. blocking domain names, might delay the adoption of a more recent set of technical specifications adopted by the IETF under the acronym DNSSEC for Domain Name System Security Extension. Those specifications would add security functionalities and allow a better authentification on the Internet. Such a new system might help to fight different types of online pirates which easily work under anonymity.

If this is the way forward to limit the illicit uses of the Internet, then the response to the copying machine that the Internet is would be in the (Internet) machine, not in the law. On the Internet, code (including technical specifications) is the law — but this should not prevent the legislators to adopt balanced rules to tame the Internet where it is really necessary, for example to fight the spread of hate speech online.

La Sabam, estimant que cette situation de non-droit ne pouvait perdurer, a requis du président du tribunal de première instance de Bruxelles qu’il ordonne au fournisseur d’accès Internet Scarlet, sous peine d’astreinte, de filtrer à ses frais et pour une durée illimitée l’ensemble des échanges P2P de fichiers électroniques transitant sur son réseau qui reprennent une œuvre musicale figurant au catalogue de la société de droits.

La Sabam espérait ainsi pouvoir exercer un contrôle plénipotentiaire sur les partages illégaux de fichiers entre les clients de Scarlet. Le président du tribunal a délivré l’ordonnance de filtrage requise par la Sabam, contre laquelle Scarlet s’est empressé de faire appel devant la Cour d’appel de Bruxelles.

Scarlet soutenait que l’injonction n’était pas conforme au droit de l’Union car elle lui imposait, de facto, une obligation générale de surveillance des communications sur son réseau, ce qui serait incompatible tant avec la directive 2000/31/CE sur le commerce électronique qu’avec les droits fondamentaux de ses clients.

C’est dans ce contexte que la Cour d’appel de Bruxelles a posé la question suivante à la CJUE : « est-ce que le droit de l’Union permet aux États membres d’autoriser un juge national à ordonner à un fournisseur d’accès à Internet de mettre en place, de façon générale, à titre préventif, aux frais exclusifs de ce dernier et sans limitation dans le temps, un système de filtrage des communications électroniques afin d’identifier les téléchargements illégaux de fichiers ? ».

La Cour européenne, dans un arrêt du 24 novembre 2011, a décidé qu’elle n’autoriserait pas la Sabam (et consorts) à se comporter comme un « Big Brother » au Royaume du Web. En effet, elle a estimé qu’une surveillance globale du trafic Internet par la société protectrice des droits d’auteurs, ainsi que le filtrage des fichiers qui en découlerait, seraient contraires au droit de l’Union européenne. Et comme d’aucuns le savent, le droit de l’Union fait la force.

La CJUE a rappelé que la directive européenne sur le commerce électronique proscrivait toute mesure qui obligerait un fournisseur d’accès à Internet à procéder à une surveillance générale des informations qu’il transmet sur son réseau.
Par conséquent, bien que l’objectif poursuivi par la Sabam soit parfaitement louable, pareille injonction n’en demeure pas moins incompatible avec la directive relative au commerce électronique.

Par ailleurs, la Cour européenne a considéré qu’une telle mesure constituait une atteinte caractérisée à la liberté d’entreprise de Scarlet, puisqu’elle l’obligeait à mettre en place un système informatique complexe, coûteux, permanent et à ses seuls frais.

Enfin, la Cour a estimé qu’un système de filtrage était susceptible de porter atteinte aux droits fondamentaux des clients de Scarlet, à savoir à leur droit à la protection des données à caractère personnel ainsi qu’à leur liberté de recevoir ou de communiquer des informations, ces droits étant protégés par la Charte des droits fondamentaux de l’Union européenne.

Il ressort de cet arrêt que, si la protection du droit de la propriété intellectuelle est consacrée par la Charte des droits fondamentaux de l’Union européenne, cela n’en fait nullement un droit intangible et devant donc être assuré de manière absolue. Dans l’escarcelle de la CJUE, les droits intellectuels des auteurs – mis en balance avec les droits des fournisseurs d’accès à internet et de leurs clients – n’ont pas pesé suffisamment lourd.

Il s’agit en somme d’une nouvelle illustration du sacro-saint principe selon lequel les droits des uns s’arrêtent là où commencent ceux des autres, et il nous semble que la Cour européenne a opéré le meilleur choix en refusant à la Sabam de parasiter l’ensemble des trafics d’échange P2P.

Mais mon avis sera-t-il seulement le vôtre ?

Pierre Crucifix