By Florence Chafiol-Chaumont
On July 3, 2008, the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris ruled
that search engines were to be considered as hosts, therefore
rejecting the qualification of publisher and liability deriving
thereof by law. The website in question allowed users to research
videos, classified by type, and to view them through a link leading
them to the peer-to-peer or "community" website
"Dailymotion". These videos were being broadcasted
without the consent of their right holders, who sought to impose
liability on the search engines as content publisher. The court
considered that "a search engine does not generate any content
but only gives Internet users answers to the questions they phrase
through key-words they chose, and useful links to reach the
information asked for". As it did not generate any content,
the offending website acted, according to the court, as a
"host" as defined in the Loi pour la Confiance dans
l'Economie Numérique (LCEN) of June 21,
