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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Google Doesn’t Have to Filter Sites for Violations

(CN) - An Italian court refused to block Google from hosting sites that allegedly violate copyright laws, falling in line with a European high court decision that barred general filtering of web content.

Reti Televisive Italiane, a subsidiary of Mediaset empire owned by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, sought the injunction this past summer against Google and GoDaddy to shut down websites that stream soccer games, to which it owns the rights.

Google removed the infringing content, streamed from blogging platform Blogger.com, after being notified.

The Court of First Instance in Rome refused to grant an injunction since the content had already been removed, and rejected an injunction for future violations as constituting general surveillance.

In November, the Court of Justice of the European Union said it would violate European Union privacy protection rules to make Internet service providers generally filter content. That case involved Belgian ISP Scarlet Extended.

The Italian court cited the EU Scarlet decision in its opinion.

In a post to its policy blog last week, Google said copyright infringement is "something we take very seriously." It said it is implementing measures to facilitate reporting copyright violations.

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