Nintendo has won a lengthy legal battle in the French Supreme Court against the company Dstorage, which owns and operates the file-sharing website 1fichier.com, in a judgement which the Japanese giant trumpets as a victory “for the entire games industry.”
The verdict follows years of hearings and appeals, and means that any file-sharing company based in Europe must remove illegal copies of games when asked to do so by the copyright holder. If they don’t they can now be held accountable for the content, and face huge fines.
[…]
Nintendo took action against Dstorage after the company ignored requests to stop hosting illegal copies of Nintendo software. In 2021 a Paris court found that Dstorage was indeed hosting pirated games and ordered that it pay Nintendo €935k (£783k / $1 million) in damages. Dstorage appealed this decision but lost in 2023 and was ordered to pay further costs.
Dstorage’s final avenue was the French Supreme Court, where it argued that a court order was required before it had to remove specific content from its file-sharing services. The court rejected this argument, and that will be the final judgment in this matter.
(emphasis mine)
TL;DR: 1fichier argued that court orders were required to remove content they host and the French Supreme Court confirmed that they should remove on rightholder’s request (as the law already specifies)
This seems pretty normal to me. Isn’t needing to remove copyrighted files when asked by the holder how it already worked?
It’s better than content hosts being held liable by default. Public file sharing would be a non-starter without a safe harbor provision (where the host is only liable if they don’t remove items they’re made aware of).
Yes it did. I left out this paragraph that explains what changes with this decision (emphasis mine)
Dstorage’s final avenue was the French Supreme Court, where it argued that a court order was required before it had to remove specific content from its file-sharing services. The court rejected this argument, and that will be the final judgment in this matter.
(emphasis mine)
TL;DR: 1fichier argued that court orders were required to remove content they host and the French Supreme Court confirmed that they should remove on rightholder’s request (as the law already specifies)
This seems pretty normal to me. Isn’t needing to remove copyrighted files when asked by the holder how it already worked?
It’s better than content hosts being held liable by default. Public file sharing would be a non-starter without a safe harbor provision (where the host is only liable if they don’t remove items they’re made aware of).
It sounds like they already had a safe harbor even if they didn’t jump when a company said so.
Yes it did. I left out this paragraph that explains what changes with this decision (emphasis mine)