It's On: Details Emerge Of Polish Government's Formal Request For Top EU Court To Throw Out Upload Filters

from the worth-a-try dept

Earlier this year, Techdirt wrote about an intriguing tweet from the account of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland, which announced: "Tomorrow #Poland brings action against copyright directive to CJEU". The hashtags for the tweet made clear what Poland was worried about: "#Article13 #Article17". However, at that time, no details were forthcoming about this potentially important legal move. It was disappointing that nothing more has been heard about this unexpected development since then -- until now. A notice on the Official Journal of the European Union includes the following: "Case C-401/19: Action brought on 24 May 2019 -- Republic of Poland v European Parliament and Council of the European Union". The corresponding entry indicates that the Polish government believes that the upload filters required by Article 13/17 represent an "infringement of the right to freedom of expression and information" guaranteed by Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union:

The Republic of Poland claims specifically that the imposition on online content-sharing service providers of the obligation to make best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information (point (b) of Article 17(4) of [EU Copyright] Directive 2019/790) and the imposition on online content-sharing service providers of the obligation to make best efforts to prevent the future uploads of protected works or other subject-matter for which the rightsholders have lodged a sufficiently substantiated notice (point (c), in fine, of Article 17(4) of Directive 2019/790) make it necessary for the service providers -- in order to avoid liability -- to carry out prior automatic verification (filtering) of content uploaded online by users, and therefore make it necessary to introduce preventive control mechanisms. Such mechanisms undermine the essence of the right to freedom of expression and information and do not comply with the requirement that limitations imposed on that right be proportional and necessary.

Nothing new there, of course -- it's what Techdirt and many others pointed out repeatedly before the Directive was passed. But what is significant is that this time it is the Polish government that is making this statement, and in a complaint to the EU's highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). As a previous post explained, some are of the view that the key importance of Poland's legal action is that it requires the CJEU to consider the questions raised. That will necessarily include whether upload filters are "proportional and necessary" as a response to the uploading of unauthorized copies by members of the public.

As to the remedies, the Polish government ideally wants points (b) and (c) of the following section of Article 13/17 cancelled:

If no authorisation is granted, online content-sharing service providers shall be liable for unauthorised acts of communication to the public, including making available to the public, of copyright-protected works and other subject matter, unless the service providers demonstrate that they have: (a) made best efforts to obtain an authorisation, and (b) made, in accordance with high industry standards of professional diligence, best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information; and in any event (c) acted expeditiously, upon receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice from the rightholders, to disable access to, or to remove from their websites, the notified works or other subject matter, and made best efforts to prevent their future uploads in accordance with point (b).

If, however, the CJEU decides it is not possible to excise just those parts, the Polish government has a fallback position: it asks for Article 13/17 to be annulled in its entirely. It's too early to say whether Poland's request stands any chance of being granted. But it would certainly be rather fun watching the copyright industry go into meltdown if it saw all its lobbying for upload filters undone at a stroke.

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Filed Under: article 13, article 17, blocking, censorship machines, cjeu, copyright, copyright directive, filtering, poland, upload filters