User Generated Content Fraught With Risk In Europe
A recent French decision has blown a gaping hole in the defenses available to Internet companies for hosting third party content under French law. Article 6-I-2 of the French Law for Confidence in the Digital Economy (LCEN) (which mirrors Article 14 of the EU E-Commerce Directive) states that public providers of "communications services" cannot be held liable for “information stored at the request of a recipient of those services" if the provider "did not have actual knowledge of [the] illegal nature" of the information, or if the provider "acted expeditiously to remove the data or make access impossible" after learning of its illegality (Basically, the requirements of the DMCA).
The Paris Court of First Instance held last month, however, that Bloobox.net was not immune for hosting a user-submitted link on its Fuzz.fr service, and was liable as an editor for its putative involvement in the "organization and presentation" of the link and associated headline.
This decision extends a trend in which European courts, particularly on the Continent, have increasingly been willing to find Internet companies liable for user-generated content. If this trend continues, websites and Internet providers will be looking at major legal problems in
Thanks to Steptoe & Johnson's E-Commerce Law Week for the link.
