Italian Court Realizes That Yahoo Isn't Liable For Infringing Works Found Via Its Search Engine

from the secondary-liability dept

Wed, Jul 20th 2011 10:09pm — Mike Masnick

Qûr Tharkasdóttir alerts us to the news that an earlier court ruling in Italy, that placed liability on Yahoo for not magically knowing how to block all links that might lead to certain infringing material, has been overturned. Apparently, the higher court realized that applying such third party liability was crazy (Google translation from the original Italian. The translation is a bit funky, but it seems clear that the court recognized the basic problems of telling Yahoo it must automatically block all links that might lead to infringing movies based solely on the title of that movie. Chalk one up for common sense... though it's a shame it had to wait until an appeal to get the ruling right.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: copyright, italy, liability, yahoo

11 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

ECA (profile), 20 Jul 2011 @ 10:51pm

i LOVE IT
this is as bad as suing the PHONE BOOK for listing an adult book store, or listing a Muslim church..
Or, looking for a book on Living off the grid, Jungle Survival, Ayn rand..
Or dialing 411, 555-1212...and trying to find a business in your area..

OK, lets ban dialing up the operator to find a NON-EMERGENCY call to the hospital/police/fire dept..

Lets ban libraries for teaching you HOW to do plumbing, because most of those PARTS are Under Patent protection.

Lets ban books in school, as they are copyrighted..Which is funny, as History shouldnt be copy protected.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
fogbugzd (profile), 20 Jul 2011 @ 11:08pm

The court got it right. Yahoo isn't liable. Under European law only Google can be found liable of infringement or anything else that it can be remotely connected to.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
rstr5105 (profile), 20 Jul 2011 @ 11:23pm

It's good to see...
A justice system finally make the right choice on something related to technology.

Now if we could just get the U.S. government to give up this farce called ProtectIP we might just make it somewhere.

..Which is funny, as History shouldnt be copy protected

But without copy protection, how are they going to tell us what �REALLY� happened? Can't have just anyone writin' the history books donch'ya know...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Nicedoggy, 21 Jul 2011 @ 12:52am

The judges are saying "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" LoL
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rikuo (profile), 21 Jul 2011 @ 2:03am

But what about Google Video
If Yahoo isn't liable based solely on that it has links to the movie...then what about that infamous Google Video case from a short while back? Where Google Video executives were found guilty of a crime because they weren't quite quick enough to take down links to an offensive video?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The IPKat, 21 Jul 2011 @ 2:34am

To put the record straight, the main problem with the original decision was the way it was reported in the Italian press: the more boring, if less exciting, version -- from the legal perspective anyway -- can be read http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2011/03/wednesday-whimsies_30.html (2nd item down).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Q�r Tharkasd�ttir (profile), 21 Jul 2011 @ 2:53am

For (not) doing just that...
Lest anyone should think Italy is turning into a paradise of Enlightenment:

http://torrentfreak.com/italian-isps-sued-for-ignoring-btjunkie-blockade-110713/
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2011 @ 3:35am

Hate to be the grammar nazi here but you forgot to close your parenthesis >.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Fickelbra (profile), 21 Jul 2011 @ 4:19am

Re:
Beat me to the punch. :) I never mind much because I feel anyone who cares about their article welcomes the feedback.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2011 @ 6:43am

Did anyone else find it ironic, The article about Yahoo has to be translated by Google?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Atkray (profile), 21 Jul 2011 @ 9:12am

Re:
If you are Google this isn't even funny.
[ link to this | view in thread ]