Article 15 prevents Member States from imposing on internet intermediaries, with respect to activities covered by Articles 12-14, a general obligation to monitor the information which they transmit or store or a general obligation to actively seek out facts or circumstances indicating illegal activities. This is important, as general monitoring of millions of sites and web pages would, in practical terms, be impossible and would result in disproportionate burdens on intermediaries and higher costs of access to basic services for users. [73] However, Article 15 does not prevent public authorities in the Member States from imposing a monitoring obliga tion in a specific, clearly defined individual case.[73] In this context, it is important to note that the reports and studies on the effectiveness of blocking and filtering applications appear to indicate that there is not yet any technology which could not be circumvented and provide full effectiveness in blocking or filtering illegal and harmful information whilst at the same time avoiding blocking entirely legal information resulting in violations of freedom of speech.

Recognising the need for co-operation between States and private industry

need to protect legitimate interests

roper balance between the interests of law enforcement and respect for fundamental human rights

Representatives from the creative industries, leading UK search engines, and the IPO developed a Voluntary Code of Practice dedicated to the removal of links to infringing content from the first page of search results.

Signatories of the Voluntary Code of Practice are: Google Bing BPI Motion Picture Association

“Institutional standards should not contain elements pushed in by lobbies, since they are detrimental to public interests. Of course lobbies have financial and political means to ignore or distort standards in their products, but they want more. T

Can technology resolve these issues? As regards technical solutions, there are already examples of these, such as YouTube’s Content ID, an automated piece of software that scans material uploaded to the site for IP infringement by comparing it against a database of registered IPs. The next challenge may be how these types of systems can be harnessed by online platform providers to address extreme and hate crime content. Again the dilemma for policy- and law-makers may be the extent to which they are prepared to cede control over content to technology companies, which will become judge, jury and executioner. 

who should bear the cost of monitoring and removal.

o block access to websites where infringing content has been hosted. In Cartier International AG & Ors v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd & Ors [2016] EWCA civ 658 the Court of Appeal concluded that it is entirely reasonable to expect ISPs to pay the costs associated with implementing mechanisms to block access to sites where infringing content has been made available

Beijing Higher People’s Court [北京市高级人民法院], Zhong Qin Wen v. Baidu [中青文v.百度], 2014 Gao Min Zhong Zi No. 2045, [（2014）高民终字第2045号], 2014

On appeal, Beijing Higher People’s Court upheld the previous decision.  This case sets a duty for Internet hosting providers to protect popular works