Rome court ups Vimeo fine after confirming Mediaset ruling

The Rome court of appeal, confirming an earlier ruling in a case brought by MediaForEurope/Mediaset against video-sharing site Vimeo for illicit redistribution of its programming, has upped the fine to be paid by the site to the claimant.

The court, which had rejected Vimeo’s appeal against an earlier ruling, has now fined the group an additional €3.5 million, bringing to €12 million the amount it will have to pay Mediaset.

The court found that it was not the duty of the rightsholder in such cases to to indicate precisely the URLs of videos illicitly uploaded and that it was sufficient to supply the titles of programmes distribiuted without authorisiation.

It fell to Vimeo, it ruled, to identify copyright violations at the time such content was uploaded or shortly afterwards and to have tools at hand to remove or disable access to content based on the data provided by Mediaset without the supply of the precise URL.

Mediaset hailed the court’s ruling, saying that it had coinfirmed principles laid out in an earlier ruling by the Court of Cassation regarding the liability of hosting providers.