The Cour de cassation, France’s highest court of appeal, has overturned two court orders which required Google to remove copyright infringing items and to block users from uploading these items again in future.

The court ruled that such “take-down, stay-down” orders contravene the e-Commerce Directive, which forbids EU Member States from imposing a general obligation on ISPs to monitor the content stored on or passing through their networks. The orders were also found to conflict with the French Law for Trust in the Digital Economy (2004).

The French ruling is the latest in a series of similar rulings testing the provisions of the e-Commerce Directive. Echoing the European Court of Justice in SABAM vs Scarlet and SABAM vs Netlog, the Cour de cassation has confirmed that pro-actively policing the Internet for copyright infringement is the responsibility of rightsholders, not ISPs and hosting providers.