Fighting illegal services that show cultural content

Arcom can identify illegal services and place them on a list of illegal services. This list can be used to inform users and encourage intermediaries, such as advertising or online payment intermediaries, or technical hosting providers, for example, to stop collaborating with identified services. The Authority's characterization can also be used by rights holders as part of their legal action to obtain the blocking of illegal services. In this way, the aim is to isolate unlawful services ahead of the blocking demands made by rights holders before the courts.

Arcom can also be called upon, after a court verdict has been handed down, to obtain the blocking of services containing all or a substantial part of the content of a service that has already been the subject of a blocking order. In this way, the Authority is responsible for updating court rulings in the case of services organized to quickly circumvent them and make unlawful content accessible to the general public once again (known as "mirror sites").

Finally, Arcom must encourage the conclusion of agreements between rights holders and all players likely to put an end to infringements of copyright and neighbour rights on the Internet. These agreements will enable the most virtuous players to commit themselves, alongside rights holders and under the aegis of the public authorities, to the protection of creation. Their application will be regularly assessed by Arcom.

As part of its mission to protect works under article L.331-12, 1°, of the French intellectual property code, Arcom may publish a list of the names and activities of online public communication services which have been the subject of deliberation and which have been found to have seriously and repeatedly infringed copyright or neighboring rights.

The deliberation by which Arcom considers that an online public communication service has seriously and repeatedly infringed copyright or neighboring rights, and consequently decides to add it to the list , follows an adversary proceeding, and is published on the Arcom website.

The initiation of the proceedings is entrusted to the rapporteur "appointed by the vice-president of the Conseil d'Etat, after consultation with the French regulatory authority for audiovisual and digital communication, from among the members of the administrative jurisdictions in activity, for a period of four years, renewable once", who is responsible for initiating proceedings and the investigation prior to the pronouncement of the legal sanctions provided for by law no. 86-1067 of September 30, 1986 , or by one of his deputies appointed under the same conditions.

The rapporteur may be assisted by sworn agents, who have investigative powers enabling them to seek out and record infringements. By objectivising the characterisation of sites, this mission is likely to secure self-regulatory actions on the part of various intermediaries, and in particular online advertising operators ("Follow the money" approach) or other intermediaries, notably online payment operators and search engines, likely to sign voluntary agreements under the aegis of the public authority.

For the duration of their inclusion on this list, operators maintaining commercial relations with these services, in particular to carry out advertising insertions or provide payment means, must make public the existence of these relations at least once a year, under conditions specified by Arcom.

The Authority is also responsible for evaluating the effectiveness of the agreements concluded, and may to this end "request from the parties to these agreements any useful information relating to their implementation. It may formulate notices to promote the conclusion of such agreements and proposals to alleviate any difficulties encountered in their execution or at the stage of their conclusion."

Arcom has been endowed with the means to strengthen the scope of pass judgements against illegal services, in order to combat the phenomenon of "mirror sites", i.e. services similar to blocked sites which appear following the implementation of blocking measures and render such measures obsolete if they are not updated.

Arcom, seized by the rights holders party to the initial court ruling, is thus empowered to demand the updating of blocking and delisting measures, and more generally of all measures ordered by the court, from any person affected by the ruling, for a period not exceeding that remaining under the provisions of the injunction. The Authority communicates the identification data of unlawful services to technical service providers.

The powers of Arcom's sworn agents, in connection with drawing up the list of illegal services, may also be used as part of the scheme to fight "mirror" sites.

The sites likely to be targeted by these new measures are those which wholly or substantially reproduce the content of the service mentioned in the aforementioned decision.

In addition, the Authority has drawn up model agreements, which it invites "rights holders and any other person likely to contribute to remedying infringements of online copyright and neighbour rights to conclude", and regularly assesses their application.

Where the initial court ruling or Arcom's demand is not complied with, the judicial authority may be seized, on summary proceedings or on application, to order any measure designed to disable access to the services in question.