In its search results Yahoo! is once again free to show links to websites which offer “pirate” streaming of the Iranian film “About Elly”.
The search engine’s appeal has been granted and the order issued by the Court of Rome this March after a request by PFA Films to remove all links leading to “infringing copies” of the film, has been revoked.
With this new decision of 11 July 2011, the section of the Court of Rome specialized in intellectual property has reaffirmed the principle of non-responsibility of the provider: “limitation of liability introduced for the benefit of ISPs is primarily designed to prevent the introduction of a new hypothesis of strict liability which is not legislatively defined, or at least to prevent the hypothesis of profit sharing by providers on illegal contents transmitted by third parties using their connectivity services.”
With regard to Yahoo!’s failure to remove links to material reported by PFA film as infringing copyrights, the Court underlined that the applicant must not only prove they are the legitimate holder of intellectual rights but must also provide proof of the unauthorized publication of the work on the reported websites. In doing so the applicant is therefore required to give precise indications of the URLs of sites where the alleged violation has taken place. However, PFA Film limited itself to bringing to Yahoo!’s attention in general terms the presence of a considerable number of links offering non authorized viewing of the film.
Many Italian netizens now hope that this order by the Court of Rome will have the power to influence the outcome of the public consultation of the controversial AGCOM Regulation, which we have recently dealt with on our blog.
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