The European Court of Justice has told copyright owners and rights holders that they cannot ask ISPs to filter content they believe to be illegal.
The Court said that while ISPs could be asked to block specific sites, filtering content was a breach of the E-commerce Directive. The ruling overturns the decision of the Court of First Instance in Belgium, where the case originated, which said that the ISP should block pirated content.
The ISP, Scarlet, then had its appeal upheld by the Belgium Court of Appeal. It’s taken seven years for the ECJ to agree.
The case was brought originally by SABAM, a company which licences music rights in Belgium, which discovered that customers of Scarlet were downloading content it had responsibility for licensing illegally.
The ECJ decided that as well as affecting Scarlets ability to operate its business, filtering content would infringe on its customers’ rights to protect their own data.
‘Such an injunction could potentially undermine freedom of information since that system might not distinguish adequately between unlawful content and lawful content with the result that its introduction could lead to the blocking of lawful communications,’ said the Court in a statement.
The Open Rights Group’s Peter Bradwell responded to the judgement, saying ‘This judgement is a victory for freedom of expression online. It draws a thick line in the sand that future copyright enforcement measures in the UK can not cross. Invasive and general surveillance of users is unacceptable. This helps to nail down the limits of powers to curtail people’s freedom to communicate online.’
