Said they have the technical means to either block or filter copyright-infringing material on P2P networks, and therefore gave the ISP six months to begin doing so.
In a first of its kind ruling in Europe, a Belgian court has ruled that the ISP Scarlet must take responsibility for stopping illegal P2P file-sharing on its network.
The judge noted that since ISPs have the technical means at their disposal to either block or filter copyright-infringing material on P2P networks and therefore gave the ISP Scarlet 6 months to implement such measures.
In its sentence on June 29th, 2007, the Court of First Instance of Brussels ordered the ISP Scarlet to adopt one of eleven technical measures put forward by a court-appointed expert in order to prevent Internet users from illegally downloading copyrighted music content of The Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers (SABAM) using P2P and file-sharing software.
IFPI Chairman and CEO John Kennedy said: “This is an extremely significant ruling which bears out exactly what we have been saying for the last two years – that the internet’s gatekeepers, the ISPs, have a responsibility to help control copyright-infringing traffic on their networks. The court has confirmed that the ISPs have both a legal responsibility and the technical means to tackle piracy. This is a decision that we hope will set the mould for government policy and for courts in other countries in Europe and around the world.
“We congratulate SABAM on the successful outcome of this case. It has secured a judgment which should help protect music composers, artists, producers and other right holders from the enormous damage done by internet piracy.”
The judgment could set a precedent for other European countries in that it will be that much easier to both make a case for copyright infringement as well as the forced implementation for a solution. It pointed in particular to the filtering technology developed by Audible Magic. It also referred to six other possible solutions to block the traffic of unlicensed music, which are highlighted in an experts’ report commissioned by the court. This is the first case in Europe that has examined in detail the technologies that are available to block or filter copyright-infringing traffic on file-sharing networks.
The court refused to accept the ISP’s argument that “…the requested technical measures came down to imposing a duty of supervision of the entire P2P activities, which is contrary to the legislation on E-commerce," instead determining that the termination order does not impose a general obligation to monitor its network since the solutions identified by the expert are “technical instruments” that limit themselves to blocking or filtering certain information transmitted on its network. The court said that its ruling does not constitute a general obligation to monitor the network.
Moreover, the court found that content filtering and blocking software does not not deal with any personal data and that a blocking measure has a purely technical and automatic character, as the ISP is not playing any active role in the blocking or filtering. Consequently, the Court ordered the ISP Scarlet to put an end to illegal copyright infringement by its customers using P2P and file-sharing software.
In probably the only fit of humility SABAM noted in a response to the ruling that the "P2P phenomenon is not the only reason for the drop in CD sales in Belgium but that it has certainly greatly contributed to it."
The only thing that makes me concerned about the judgment is that it involves automatic filtering and blocking. What will happen if other interests or concerns determined that they too need an active filtering mechanism implemented at the ISP level? Will it also filter legal, and non-copyrighted content? The risk for abuse and censorship is quite great.
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