Brussels, 16 July (LaPresse) – Google may be held liable for YouTube videos posted by a content creator bound by a commercial partnership. This is the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which was consulted by the Council of State following the €750,000 fine imposed in July 2022 by the Italian Communications Authority (AGCOM) on Google Ireland, ordering it to remove from YouTube several videos promoting online gambling, in breach of Italian legislation. According to the judges in Luxembourg, in order to benefit from the exemption from liability for content published on a platform, the operator must act as an ‘intermediary service provider’, that is, carry out a purely technical, automatic and passive activity, which excludes any knowledge of or control over the information transmitted or stored. They emphasise that this is not the case where an operator examines – for the purpose of concluding a commercial partnership agreement – the main theme of a video channel, the most-viewed or most recent videos on that channel, and the relevant metadata. In doing so, they point out, the operator acquires concrete knowledge of the essential content of a set of videos and cannot therefore claim to be acting as an intermediary service provider.
Digital: EU Court: ‘Agcom fine upheld; Google liable for video creator partners’v
Brussels, 16 July (LaPresse) – Google may be held liable for YouTube videos posted by a content creator bound by a commercial partnership. This is the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which was consulted by the Council of State following the €750,000 fine imposed in July 2022 by the Italian Communications Authority (AGCOM) on Google Ireland, ordering it to remove from YouTube several videos promoting online gambling, in breach of Italian legislation. According to the judges in Luxembourg, in order to benefit from the exemption from liability for content published on a platform, the operator must act as an ‘intermediary service provider’, that is, carry out a purely technical, automatic and passive activity, which excludes any knowledge of or control over the information transmitted or stored. They emphasise that this is not the case where an operator examines – for the purpose of concluding a commercial partnership agreement – the main theme of a video channel, the most-viewed or most recent videos on that channel, and the relevant metadata. In doing so, they point out, the operator acquires concrete knowledge of the essential content of a set of videos and cannot therefore claim to be acting as an intermediary service provider.
