German Court Holds Registrar Liable for Torrent Copyright Infringement

GERMANY—TorrentFreak has reported that a German court has found a registrar liable for copyright infringement by a client torrent site or tracker. According to the site, Key-Systems, the targeted registrar, "informs TorrentFreak that if allowed to stand, the ruling will have dire consequences for the kind of services domain registrars are able to provide in future." The client torrent tracker, H33T, went black in September of last year. "Although the downtime was initially shrouded in mystery," wrote Andy for TorrentFreak, "it later became clear it had been targeting in a copyright infringement action." Targeted by Universal Music in order to interrupt the illegal distribution of Robin Thicke’s album, Blurred Line, The reasoning of the court, however, is that registrars bear some burden if the illegal activity is something it should have been aware of. The judgment "just published by the Regional Court of Saarbrücken states that a domain registrar, in this case Key-Systems, can be held liable for the infringing actions of a site (in this case H33T) if it is 'obvious' that it is committing offenses under copyright law." In this case, "Following complaints from Universal and its legal team, Key-Systems reportedly informed H33T about the alleged infringement of Blurred Lines but no action was taken to remove the content in question. This, alongside claims that H33T had disguised the owner of its domain by using a shell company in the Seychelles, meant that the registrar had no choice but to disable the domain or become liable itself." The transfer of liability from client to registrar appears to be a case-by-case designation, however. "In earlier cases," reported Andy, "the Federal Court found that DENIC, Germany’s central registry for domain names, was generally not liable for violations carried out by third parties, but in this case the Regional Court said that infringement was obviously being carried out by H33T so Key-Systems needed to act." The music industry is clearly pleased with the ruling, even characterizing it as precedent-setting. “With the current judgment," claimed Dr. Florian Drücke of the Federal Music Industry Association (BVMI), "the Regional Court of Saarbrücken has for the first time clarified the responsibility of a registrar in respect of copyright infringements carried out via a domain registered by him. “For rights holders this offers a new protection option to take action against portals with illegal offers on the net, that hide their identities using front companies registered abroad,” he added. Volker Greimann. the lawyer for Key-Systems, was not quite ready to surrender on the matter, telling Torrent Freak, “Let’s just say that this was not the final word in the matter. We are currently reviewing the judgment and our options for having this overturned in the next instance. “This judgment makes no legal sense and is full of errors," he added. "If this judgment stands, it will have dire consequences for the kind of services German registrars can provide.”