Offering Free Wi-Fi Doesn’t Create Copyright Liability

Europe’s highest court has ruled that businesses offering free Wi-Fi to customers are not liable if their customers violate copyrights. In 2010, Sony’s German branch wanted to hold a sound-system shop owner responsible when music was offered for illegal download on the shop’s Wi-Fi. But last week the EU court said a service provider like the shop owner can’t be held liable so long as he did not initiate the illegal data transmission, or select or modify the information in that transition. The ruling did allow for an injunction ordering the internet connection to be protected by a password.