According to news reports, the largest Brazilian television broadcaster – TV GLOBO – has obtained an injunction before the State Court of São Paulo against Google based on copyright violation. The injunction requires the search engine to remove from the search results links to sites which offer access to real time programs from TV Globo without authorization.
TV GLOBO claims to have first sent warning letters to Google demanding the removal of the links and that the court action was only filed as a last resource in view of the lack of compliance with the requests.
Also TV GLOBO informs that the court action does not aim to obtain indemnification from Google, only the removal of the links. The sites named on the court action are apparently all hosted outside Brazil.
As this blogger has verified, until this date the sites which were named on the news reports still appear on the search results of GOOGLE after the query “tv online gratis” (free online tv). It is not clear whether Google has been officially served with the injunction yet.
Although it is only a preliminary injunction and thus can be appealed, it is already an important precedent for copyright owners specially since the bill which aims at governing the Internet (the so-called Internet Bill) has so far no provision regarding take down notices.
The courts should wake up to the fact that, in the absence of take down procedures, owners will have to resort to court actions which will contribute to their backlog of work.
Rodrigo Borges Carneiro
