The ‘Notice and Takedown’ Rule

The Supreme Commercial Court has supported, once again, a hosting provider in a dispute regarding pirated content on its servers (case VAS – 6672/2011, Top 7 Ltd v Dignata Media et al). The judges have confirmed that the ‘notice and takedown’ rule exists in the Russian law and extends, at minimum, to hosters.

The court, however, went further than that. Protection will also be provided to social networks and file sharing websites, likely the worst violators of copyright in the Russian Internet.

The ‘notice and takedown’ rule means that an internet company does not have to monitor what happens within its network. It is not required to prevent the misuse of its services pro-actively, but it may get in trouble only if it was notified of the pirated material on its servers but did not remove it.

The judges have said that this legal position can also be applied to the owners of file-sharing and social networking services. Technically, this is an obiter dictum as it has no relation to the dispute and, therefore, does not bear the precedential value. In practical terms, the judges have made it clear that they will give shelter to pirates: they will only be liable if a copyright owner proves that they knew of illegal content on their resources.

This means that the Supreme Commercial Court gives effect to the ‘notice and take down’ rule similar to that found in the US Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, but which, strictly speaking, does not abide within the Russian laws.