Book industry strongly opposes bill on intermediary liability

By Estudio Chaloupka

Several associations from Argentina’s book industry publicly displayed their position against a bill that addresses Internet Service Providers (ISP) liability. “We cannot accept a law that gives a total path of indemnity to Internet giants and therefore weaken the intellectual property rights of all those who create content”, states a November 6, 2018, press release from the Argentine Chamber of Books (CAL), the Center of Administration of Reprographic Rights of Argentina (CADRA), the Argentine Chamber of Publications (CAP) and the Society of Argentine Visual Artists (SAVA), among many other institutions.

The controversial bill (Number 2668-D-2012), currently under discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, aims to regulate the responsibility of ISP’s in order to guarantee freedom of expression and the right to information. The bill says that ISP liability will be considered under a standard of fault analysis instead of strict liability rule: ISP’s will not be responsible for the contents generated by third parties except when having been duly notified of a judicial order of removal or blocking.

It was presented by Senators Liliana Fellner and Federico Pinedo and has been preliminary approved by the Senate on November 2, 2016. Although a general consensus believes the bill to be an improvement over previous attempts to legislate on the subject, publishers, authors and producers have strongly oppose it as they consider it releases ISP’s from the responsibility of controlling contents uploaded to their platforms, thus favoring piracy over copyright.

“To remove illegal content in the services of ISPs, including those of an intimate and private nature, a prior court order must be obtained, creating an inaccessible and inefficient system, since it is impossible to take legal action for each illegal upload contents”, the publishers statement affirms.