Ruling against Dutch service provider might impact Mininova

Last week a Dutch court has made a significant ruling in a case against internet service provider internetoplichting.nl.The court ruled that internetoplichting.nl is responsible for all comments made by users on its site.

Internetoplichting.nl is a site where users can warn other users for online fraudsters by posting messages to a forum. One user posted an article about online retailer trendylaarzen.nl. Since the information was wrong, trendylaarzen.nl asked interoplichting.nl to remove the information, surrender the personal data of the user responsible, and ensure that no wrong posts were made about trendylaarzen.nl in the future. While internetoplichting.nl was willing to surrender the user data, it did not want to filter information pro-actively. Internetoplichting.nl claimed that is was not liable for any information on the website since it was a ‘mere conduit’ in the sense of the e-commerce directive and could therefore not be held liable for its users.

The court thought different however, and ruled that internetoplichting.nl could be held liable for information on its site. Given the specific nature of the site, internetoplichting.nl must take extra care for any information posted on the site. The fact that this would take a lot of effort from internetoplichting.nl does not entail that this responsibility should shift to trendylaarzen.nl or other parties mentioned on the site. In practice, this means that internetoplichting.nl must filter any content pro-actively, something they say is impossible with over 280.000 posts on the site. Therefore, internetoplichting.nl has shut down their site and is now contemplating appealing the verdict.

The verdict could be relevant for other Dutch service providers. In particular the verdict might impact the case against Bittorrent site Mininova.org. Already Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has stated that the verdict has strengthened them in the believe that sites like the Pirate Bay and Mininova should filter their content pro-actively.