Whether it is a scandal on Twitter or counterfeit on eBay, internet intermediary liability is all over Europe grasping strong holds within the country. Currently the courts are looking for steps to regulate these internet mediators and violations. L’Oreal and Motion Picture Association of America are few rights owners who have reported of such uncertainties over the eBay and BT respectively. Such developments will surely trigger other rights owners to respond in similar respect. It will also force the mediators to resume their business plans and have new mechanisms that enable the rights owners to remove the violating content without going any court.

There is a delicate rapport between the rights owners and Internet intermediaries. The formers ones put all the responsibility over the internet intermediaries and ask them to pay. Infringers who are not organized operated are hard to sail through the proceedings. The European legislature is looking forward to deal with the problem since 2002. In their approach, they have the following points- intermediaries are not responsible for the transmission of data if they are mere conduits but will be notified if they fail in removing any illicit data or content. Furthermore those mediators with adequate knowledge about the infringements can be asked to stall their service which is being used for copyrights.

eBay said in defense to the claim brought up by L’Oreal, that it was just a host and thus not responsible for the fake goods that were sold via website. The website can be liable for the acts only if assistance was provided by the online operator to the customers about the fake goods. The CJEU found that the courts of the country may inflict orders on the mediators like eBay not only to halt these current infringements but also avoid such problems from occurring in future.

The Motion Picture Association of America got success in getting the order from the UK court for blocking the UK users from accessing the file sharing site. Although there were a number of hurdles that came along in this issue like violating the fundament rights of the people to expression etc. but the UK courts set a great example for others to follow the law. There are many other developments in this field that are occurring presently and UK legislation is trying to curb this problem and offer fair judgment.