Internet Service Provider (ISP) Not Liable For Copyright Infringement By Third Parties

On May 13, the Second Section of the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) set an important precedent regarding the liability of internet service providers when deciding Special Appeal # 1,512,647. The rapporteur, Minister Luis Felipe Salomão, decided that Google was not liable for the copyright infringement by a third party using Orkut (a social networking service managed by Google). According to the Minister, neither the structure of Orkut nor the provider's position had contributed to the copyright infringement. The court refused to award damages for the inactivity of the provider in not removing the videos, IPs and URLs from the Orkut.

Initially, Google had been convicted by a trial court of Minas Gerais. The trial court found that google was required to indemnify a video producing company for not removing the URLs related to lectures and courses offered by the company on the internet. The videos had been posted on an Orkut community by a third party without the