Secondary Liability

Internet intermediaries, broadly understood, participate in various activities that expand their ability to use coding or designing, which transcend their classic role of neutrality regarding the online content. This change has enabled governments globally to solve the problem of the lack of control of the network by using the normative capabilities of intermediaries. The increase of normative power in recent times has leaded to an expansion of criminal liability of intermediaries. These criminal policies have strengthened public control of network users in situations considered as social danger, for example, on violations of privacy, child pornography and offences to honour

Although trademark infringement is not a recent phenomenon, it was not until the inception and explosive growth of the Internet marketplace that brand owners had to face new, titanic and virtually inexorable infringement challenges. Trademark infringement online takes place in various forms-from cybersquatting and typosquatting that capitalizes on the goodwill surrounding an existing trademark 1 to the rampant sale of counterfeit goods in online stores and auction houses. 2 Trademark holders filed 2884 cybersquatting cases in 2012, covering 5084 domain names, with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)an increase of 4.5% more than cases filed in the previous year. 3 The sale of counterfeit goods online is constantly rising, and the value of those goods is expected to top $1.7 trillion by 2015. 4 The lack of a physical sales venue, the anonymizing blanket offered to counterfeiters online, the increased international supply chains and the production of goods in countries with poor intellectual property protection, together with the low-cost communication and worldwide reach of the Internet, have made counterfeiting a thriving undertaking and put trademark owners' businesses and reputations at risk. 5

The richness of the Internet owes much to the diversity of its content, the hosting of which is made possible by content hosts. Yet, not all that is diverse is legal. Given that copyright subsists in creative content, the digitisation of content has made their duplication, adaptation and publication on the Internet extremely easy – resulting in a substantial proportion of illegal content being those that infringe copyright. In the circumstances, copyright owners have increasingly turned to Internet intermediaries, including content hosts, to protect their rights on the Internet. While the provisions in the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) that impute liability for authorising another’s infringement provides the basis for the liability of content hosts for hosting third party content that infringe copyright, the various defences and safe harbour provisions available therein do not provide any “additional” protection to content hosts. This may have implications in the way content hosts operate undermining fair use and free speech doctrine.

La nota affronta la complessa questione della responsabilità indiretta dell’Internet Service Provider per le
violazioni del diritto d’autore perpetrate in via diretta dagli utenti finali. Viacom è uno tra i più grandi creatori
e distributori al mondo di programmi televisivi, film ed altre forme di intrattenimento. YouTube è un sito internet
dove ciascuno può visualizzare in streaming video caricati dagli utenti stessi o da società di intrattenimento.
Viacom ritiene che YouTube sia responsabile in via vicaria, in via concorrente e per l’induzione alla
violazione del copyright effettuata dagli users del sito web. YouTube, grazie alle proprie politiche riesce ad
attraccare ad uno dei “safe harbors” previsti dalla normativa americana. Lo stesso non è accaduto nello
scontro fra il medesimo portale e il gruppo italiano RTI, ma in entrambi i casi si tratta solo del primo grado di
giudizio.