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On 15 July 2021, Advocate General (AG) Saugmandsgaard Øe delivered his highly awaited opinion on Case C‑401/19. This case concerns an action brought on the basis of Article 263 TFEU by the Republic of Poland asking the Court to annul Article 17(4)(b) and (c), in fine, of Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council from 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC and, in the alternative, to annul Article 17 in its entirety. This provision imposes on those providers obligations to monitor...

Following an appeal by Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) and UFA Fiction GmbH, the Kraków appeal court has amended a first-instance decision requiring them to issue a public apology for breaching the personality rights of members of the Polish Home Army (AK) and to pay compensation in relation to the broadcast and production of the film series Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter (Our mothers, our fathers). While the compensation order was quashed, the obligation to issue a public apology on Polish television and the German channels ZDF, ZDFneo and 3sat was upheld. The written grounds for...

As of 1 July 2020, on-demand audiovisual media service providers in Poland are subject to a new fee: the so-called “Netflix tax”. The fee is to be paid by on-demand audiovisual media service providers to the Polish Film Institute (PISF) and amounts to 1.5% of the revenue received from fees for access to audiovisual media services made available to the public on demand or from commercial communications, whichever is higher. The new VOD-related fee has been introduced by the Polish Government as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fees collected by the PISF will be allocated...

In a case concerning Internet liability for third-party comments, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) again delivered an interesting judgment in support of the right to freedom of expression on the Internet. In the case of Jezior v. Poland, the ECtHR found that holding the administrator of a local website liable for defamatory third-party comments, which upon notice had been immediately removed, amounted to a violation of the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). As in the case of Magyar Tartalomszolgáltatók Egyesülete...

On 12 August 2019, Poland’s application to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) seeking annulment of a provision in the recently adopted Directive 2019/790 on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The DSM Directive was adopted on 17 April 2019 (see IRIS 2019-4/5), and Poland’s action was brought on 24 May 2019. The application seeks annulment of two provisions under Article 17 of the DSM Directive concerning the liability of “online content-sharing service providers” for content uploaded by users. First,...