New Liability Rules For Online Content-Sharing Service Providers

Implementation of the provisions of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market¹("DSM Directive") into national legal orders is mandatory for all EU member states. One of the main and most widely commented changes in the Polish legislation are new rules on the liability of online content-sharing service providers (i.e. in practice: owners and administrators of online platforms), for infringement of third-party copyrights by users of those platforms. The regulations apply to platforms that allow their users to publish content online.

What are the current liability rules for platform providers? (notice and take down)

The existing regulations²- in principle - excluded the liability of hosting service providers, as long as the provider did not know that the data it stored and provided was of an unlawful nature, and upon becoming aware of this, prevented access to the data. In other words: the basic prerequisite for excluding the provider's liability was