Uloz.to must intervene in the Czech Republic against films shared illegally

The fights in the field of online film sharing have reached their final form in the Czech Republic. The case there, it is estimated, can have a wide impact and extend beyond the country’s borders. However, Uloz.to does not give up and describes the decision as an interference with the freedom of the Internet.

Who is actually responsible for this?

The Czech model is a nice example of how responsibility is divided between the operator of a given online repository and those who upload movies and other copyrighted content. So far, without uniform European regulations, operators such as Uloz.to have had the upper hand. They run the space and see no reason to be held responsible for someone infringing copyright individually. So far, even according to court decisions, this model has been going through.

So that EU Member States do not have to worry about this fight, Brussels is coming up with a proposal for a directive on copyright in the digital market. And this proposal also contains the most discussed art. 13, which exactly to companies like Uloz.to measures as follows:

“Information society service providers which store and make publicly available a large number of works or other subject matter which have been uploaded by their users shall accept: in cooperation with rightholders, measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders on the use of their works or other subject matter or on preventing the availability of works or other subject matter as part of their services designated by rightholders in cooperation with service providers. Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, must be appropriate and proportionate. Service providers shall provide rightholders with appropriate information on the operation and implementation of measures and, where appropriate, shall also report appropriate data on the recognition and use of works and other subject matter. “

Will the new strategy solve the problem?

The Czech case dispute Uloz.to versus the local association of authors and copyright holders (DILIA) was finally resolved in Solomon. As the authors’ association failed to intervene directly against the recording with lawsuits against Uloz.to, they chose a different strategy. And that seems to be a success, according to the courts.

The proposed text in the Directive was partly inspired, as DILIA did not request an action to download illegally uploaded content, but succeeded in the fact that the court ordered Uloz.to to take a measure that would not allow visitors to their website to search for the given film by its title. So the movie will be uploaded, but it will not be searchable, because the Uloz.to server will anonymize its name. This will not fulfill the goal of downloading a pirated copy to anyone who is interested. It’s probably only a matter of time before the anonymous name appears and users share it.

The lawsuit succeeded with six films (Czech well-known films) and it is now expected what the next steps will be. It is more than certain that DILIA wants to continue with other titles that it manages and applies this successful model. This will make it much more difficult for Uloz.to to work, as its customers will not be able to search for the film by its title. And, of course, a new EU-wide Directive will put an end to these efforts, requiring the EU-wide area to oblige the webmaster of illegal content to prevent works and access to them.