Social networks can't be forced to filter content, rules top EU court

Social file sharing was already here

Social file sharing has been going strong for some time now e.g. VKontakte is very popular amongst people from FSU. My wife can watch almost any Russian film, TV show or sports event - it's just as well we have real flat rate Internet (our usage last month was over 150G).

WOW....

The European Court had actually come up with a common sense decision!!!!!

I need to sit down I feel all dizzy.

Re: Are they going to apply this Newzbin

Probably not as they aggregate data from elsewhere rather than hosting it themselves or having their users post it (other than comments, etc) to the site.

An interesting if possibly unworkable idea nontheless

Re: Plus 1..... some sanity at last ?

I have now read the court's judgement and it seems the ECJ has made one decent case law judgement and re-established one principle: that global scanning/analysis/filtering of people's data is bad, an invasion of privacy and violates current European data protection law.

In my opinion, that is a good opinion. And this is how the system is supposed to work, Pass good laws and if necessary enforce them in court.

The plaintiff tried to force Netlog to assign a global filter (no saying how that was supposed to work) so that Netlog users could not link to the plaintiff's billable content. Fair enough beef, but anyone in their right mind should realize this is a pretty futile approach and will never work.

It is up to the plaintiff to protect access to their content with their own technology/methods. Requiring people who might link to it (i.e. the whole world, from the looks of it) will not work. If users were posting passwords to the plaintiff's server, etc. then those users would undoubtedly have violated some T and Cs and can therefore be legally bitch slapped. Otherwise, no.

We might just have the beginnings of a sensible legal argument against future SOPA/ACTA/PIPA take-over lobbying.

In the same way that free speech does not allow you to shout "Fire" in a crowded theater, the existence of copyright infringing material does not give you the right to slash and burn all internet user's rights to privacy and/or freedom of expression.... m'lud. Surprisingly lucid decision, really. The ECJ judges are obviously paying attention..

WIth more judgements like this one, copyright trollers and their legal hit.squads may now need to find less intrusive, Big Brotherish catch-all legislation to fulfill their demands. Or maybe just live with existing legislation? Novel thought.

Let's hope so.