RECENT EVENTS IN EU NTERNET LAW

摘要

On 4 June 2008, the French civil court of Troyes ruled that auction site eBay was guilty of counterfeit in connection with the sale of a counterfeited bag of the French luxury brand Hermes by one of eBay's customers. eBay was ordered to pay 20,000 EUR (about $31,000) in damages to Hermes jointly with the seller of the bags. eBay was also ordered to publish the decision on its French homepage for a period of three months, while Hermes was allowed to publish the decision in four different magazines of its choice at eBay's expense (with a maximum cost of 15,000 EUR, about $23,600). The case is an interesting illustration of the difficulties that are currently associated with the special liability regime for hosting providers (providing services such as Web site hosting, online backup, or online data storage) under the European E-commerce Directive (2000/31/EC). According to this Directive, which is implemented by all European member states, including France, hosting providers cannot be obligated to actively search for illegal content uploaded by their customers. Furthermore, hosting providers are exempt from liability for illegal content uploaded by their users, provided that they are not aware of any such illegal information uploaded to their systems and provided that they expeditiously remove or block any illegal information upon becoming aware of the illegal nature.