The European Commission has introduced a proposed Electronic Commerce
Directive that includes a section on intellectual property protection that
would address this liability issue. It essentially says that the operator
of a website, listserver, bulletin board, etc. is not liable for posting the
content of others until he or she has notice or knowlege of a potential
infringement. There is then a procedure for taking down the material, and
for re-posting it if the complaining party fails to follow through with a
legal action against the allegedly offending party who posted the content.
This procedure is based largely on the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act
in the United States, and it would introduce a degree of certainty for site
operators that is lacking today in the law of most Member States.
The German Information and Communications Act similarly protects the site
operator from liability until there is actual knowledge of a violation.
However, it does not include detailed procedures for taking down and
re-posting material, leaving the operator to take his chances in assessing
the seriousness of the allegations.
The US Act concerns only intellectual property infringement; there will
probably be further debate on the proposed EU Directive on the question of
applying the same principle and procedures to other content liability issues
(such as libel, obscenity, --- and violations of data privacy laws).
Scott Blackmer
Wilmer Cutler & Pickering
Washington, DC
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Oppenheim [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, February 12, 1999 4:26 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Your views please
>THIS IS FORWRAD MAIL FROM Dave Wyatt
>
>Any member have any views regards liability responsibility on the
>following:
>
>The following factors apply.
>
>Web site hosted by an educational establishment for free.
>
>Employee of the educational establishment edits the site on behalf of a
>non profit making group without any specific direction from the group.
>
>Group consists of employees of commercial organisations who fund the
>groups activities via annual subscriptions.
>
>No agreed charter for the group concerning liability.
>
>Site inadvertently publishes material content which becomes subject to a
>legal challenge e.g. Breach of Intellectual property rights, or holds
>personal data without registration e.g. names of delegates and their
>employing company.
>
>Who is liable?
>
>Host, its employee, delegates or their employers.
In my view, the individual placing the illegal material on the site is
liable; the university will also probably be liable if it knew, or had
good reason to know that illegal material was on the site, or was likely to
be put on the site.
Professor Charles Oppenheim
Dept of Information Science
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leics LE11 3TU
Tel 01509-223065
Fax 01509-223053
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