Dirk Visser on copyright and platform liability YouTube
In a column on Mr. Online, Dirk Visser, Professor of Intellectual Property Law, looks at what You Tube is doing or should be doing to counter copyright infringements on the platform in a credible and effective manner.
‘All operators of an internet plaform who “know or ought to know in a general sense that users of its platform are making protected content available to the public illegally via its platform” must take “appropriate technological measures … that can be expected from a reasonably diligent operator in its situation in order to counter credibly and effectively copyright infringements on that platform”’, Visser writes.
'This appears from the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 22 June 2021, ECLI:EU:C:2021:503 (YouTube & Cyando), in two Joined Cases of a composer against YouTube and of publisher Elsevier against the provider of a file-hosting and sharing platform ‘Uploaded’. The question then arises, what are “appropriate technological measures”? In this regard, the Court notes that You Tube “has put in place various technological measures in order to prevent and put an end to copyright infringements on its platform, such as, inter alia, a notification button and a special alert procedure for reporting and arranging for illegal content to be removed, as well as a content verification program for checking content and content recognition software for facilitating the identification and designation of such content. Thus, it is apparent that that operator has adopted technological measures to counter credibly and effectively copyright infringements on its platform” (para 94).’