Mediaset won in Court against Facebook for a double dispute on copyright (copyright) and defamation. "For the first time in Italy, Facebook has been condemned by the Court of Rome for infringement of copyright and defamation, offenses committed by hosting unauthorized links on the pages of its platform" announces Mediaset in a statement.
The Biscione does not hide its satisfaction with what it presents as a "carried out in the Italian jurisprudence for the protection of copyright". It all stems from a lawsuit initiated by Mediaset, in a dispute of modest economic value but crucial in the principles it intended to protect and with delicate implications for the precedent it creates.
But what exactly happened? In 2012, some anonymous users opened a Facebook page dedicated to a cartoon broadcast by Italia Uno and entitled kilari. Some links on the page led, on the one hand, to contents protected by copyright illegally uploaded on Youtube, on the other, to heavy insults and disparaging comments addressed to the interpreter of the theme song of the animated series. Despite numerous warnings – underlines the note from Mediaset – Facebook has chosen over the years not to remove the offending contents and links. Hence the appeal to the judiciary until the sentence of the Court of Rome with which the judges convicted Facebook of both defamation and copyright infringement.
The sentence of the Tribunal of Rome is therefore innovative and creates a significant precedent when in Brussels the Parliament, the Commission and the EU Council, a few days ago, found agreement on copyright reform. The new rules require web giants such as Google, Facebook or YouTube to conclude agreements with copyright holders and to pay for the material that is used on the internet. It is now a question of moving on to the approval of the directive which will leave two years for the States to transpose its implementation.
