Taringa! creators acquitted in copyright infringement case

By Estudio Chaloupka

After nine years, the creators of the social platform Taringa! were acquitted in the copyright infringement case in which they were accused of being "necessary assistants" in violating Argentina’s intellectual property law.

In December 2018, a Buenos Aires Oral Criminal Court ruled that the creators of Taringa! could not be civilly or criminally liable for the content that users share on the platform, arguing under a fault-based liability standard that Internet Service Providers are not guilty of providing links to infringing content. “To demand an intermediary the control of all the contents that users upload would make it impossible form a social platform or network to operate without a clear affectation to the freedom of expression”, stated part of the ruling.

Launched in 2004, Taringa! is a popular social platform among Latin American and Argentinian users, which upload the content themselves (notably images, and books and video excerpts) and receive feedback from the rest of the community. In 2011 owners Hernán and Matías Botbol and Alberto Nakayama were accused of infringing article 72 of Law Nº11.723, which regulates copyright in Argentina. All three of them alleged that they could not determine if the content uploaded by the users was breaking copyright rules.