Court of Rome vests judgement against Facebook

The Court of Rome has ruled that Facebook will have to pay fines for committing copyright infringement by making RTI protected work available to the public via hyperlinks. The court relied on the previous European Court of Justice (ECJ) decisions in cases C-527/15 and C-161/17, were it was stated that copyright infringement can be committed by making work available to public (on a new website or on the Internet in general) without authorisation of right holders via hyperlinks. The fact that hyperlinks posted by Facebook users made RTI copyrighted content publicly available without permission, was sufficient proof for the court to find Facebook liable. The court stated that Facebook is liable “for having concurred, at least with an omissive conduct, to the violations committed by users who have effectively created the Facebook profile under dispute’. According to this decision, Facebook was expected to take ‘due care’ in its commercial activities, remove illegal content upon notification, and prevent further occurrence. Facebook’s defense was based on the fact that notice and take down sent by RTI was not precise enough since it did not specify URL of infringing content, but the court rejected this argument. The court considers specification of infringing content is not of relevance (just technical detail) if right-holder reported violation of its copyright.