EU Court Ruling Protects Social Media Site
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) refused to order a Social Media site to prevent the unlawful use of copyrighted works. In 2010 SABAM (Société Belge des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs), the Belgian collecting society for music royalties, lost a lawsuit to force Netlog (a Social Media site) to add a filter to block copyrighted works from its 2 million users.
On February 16, 2012 the European Digital Rights (EDRI) announced the result of an appeal of the 2010 decision and that the CJEU ruled that Netlog:
…cannot be obliged to install a general filtering system, covering all its users, in order to prevent the unlawful use of musical and audio-visual work.
This is an important ruling for copyright owners and Social Media sites.
