Urheberrechts-Diensteanbieter-Gesetz (Copyright Service Providers Act), Online Content-Sharing Services

Section 1(1) provides that a service provider communicates works to the public when it gives the public access to copyright-protected works that users of the service have uploaded. Under section 1(2), a provider that meets its duties under section 4 and sections 7 to 11 according to high industry standards, observing proportionality, is not responsible under copyright law for that public communication.

Section 1(3) provides that the provider cannot rely on Article 6(1) of the Digital Services Act. A provider whose main purpose is to take part in copyright infringements or to facilitate them cannot rely on section 1(2).

Section 2(1) defines a service provider as a provider of an information society service whose main purpose, exclusively or at least also, is to store and make publicly available a large amount of copyright-protected content uploaded by third parties, which it organizes and promotes for profit and with which it competes for the same audiences as online content services.

Section 2(2) treats as a start-up provider one with annual revenue within the European Union of up to 10 million euros whose services have been available to the public in the European Union for less than three years. Section 2(3) treats as a small provider one with annual revenue within the European Union of up to 1 million euros.

Section 3 excludes among others non-profit online encyclopedias, non-profit educational or scientific repositories, development and sharing platforms for open-source software, providers of electronic communications services, online marketplaces, business-to-business cloud services and cloud services that let users upload content for their own use. Section 4(1) obliges the provider to make best efforts to acquire the contractual rights for the public communication of copyright-protected works.

The provider meets that duty if it acquires rights that are offered to it, that are available through representative right holders it knows, or that it can acquire through collecting societies or dependent exploitation bodies established in Germany.

Section 4(3) requires the provider, where the author has granted the right of public communication to a third party, still to pay the author appropriate remuneration for contractual uses, unless the third party is a collecting society or the author engaged the third party as a digital distributor.

Section 5(1) permits users to communicate works and parts of works to the public for quotations, for caricatures, parodies and pastiches, and for the other cases of public communication that the Urheberrechtsgesetz permits. Section 5(2) requires the provider to pay the author appropriate remuneration for a public communication for caricature, parody or pastiche, a claim that only a collecting society can assert.

Section 5(3) requires the provider to point users to the statutory permissions in its general terms and conditions. Section 7(1) obliges the provider, within the limits of section 1(2), to ensure as far as possible by blocking or removal that a work is not communicated to the public and stays unavailable, once the right holder demands this and supplies the information needed.

Section 7(2) provides that those measures may not make unavailable user-uploaded content whose use is legally permitted or that infringes no copyright. Section 7(3) requires the provider to inform the user immediately of the blocking of their upload and of the right to complain under section 14. Section 7(4) exempts start-up providers from section 7(1) while the average monthly number of different visitors to the service's websites does not exceed 5 million.

Section 7(5) presumes rebuttably that small providers are not obliged under section 7(1) in view of the principle of proportionality. Section 8(1) obliges the provider, within the limits of section 1(2), to end the public communication of a work by blocking once the right holder demands this and gives a sufficiently substantiated notice of the unauthorized public communication.

Section 9(1) requires presumably permitted uses to remain publicly communicated until a complaint procedure under section 14 ends. Under section 9(2), user-generated content that contains less than half of a third party's work or works, combines them with other content and uses third-party works only to a minor extent or marks them as legally permitted is rebuttably presumed to be legally permitted.

Section 10 treats as minor, if they are not commercial or serve only insignificant income, uses of up to 15 seconds of a film or moving-image work, up to 15 seconds of a soundtrack, up to 160 characters of a text and up to 125 kilobytes of a photographic work, photograph or graphic.

Section 11(1) requires the provider, where a user-generated upload is to be blocked automatically at the time of upload and is not a minor use, to inform the user of the blocking demand, to point out the need for a statutory permission, and to let the user mark the use as legally permitted. Where content is to be blocked automatically only after upload, section 11(2) treats it as presumably permitted for 48 hours even without a marking.

Section 12(1) requires the provider to pay the author appropriate remuneration for the public communication of presumably permitted uses. Section 14(1) requires the provider to give users and right holders an effective, free and speedy complaint procedure about blocking and about the public communication of protected works.

Section 14(3) requires the provider without delay to notify the complaint to all parties, give all parties the opportunity to comment and decide on the complaint within one week of its filing at the latest.

Where a trusted right holder declares, after review by a natural person, that the presumption in section 9(2) is to be rebutted and that continued public communication significantly impairs the economic exploitation of the work, section 14(4) requires the provider to block immediately until the complaint procedure ends. Section 14(5) requires decisions on complaints to be taken by impartial natural persons.

Section 18(1) requires the provider to exclude from the procedures under sections 7 and 8, for an appropriate period, a purported right holder who repeatedly demands the blocking of another's work as their own or of a work in the public domain. Under section 18(6), a registered association that promotes the interests of users on a non-commercial and lasting basis may sue a provider that repeatedly blocks permitted uses by mistake for an injunction.

Section 19 gives the right holder claims against the provider for information on the contractually permitted use of the right holder's repertoire and for appropriate information on how the procedures for blocking unauthorized uses work.

Section 20 applies section 5 of the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz accordingly to the duty of a provider that is not established in another Member State under section 2 of the Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz to appoint an authorized recipient in Germany for court proceedings. Section 22 provides that the provisions of the Act cannot be departed from by contract. The Act was enacted as Article 3 of the Act of 31 May 2021. It took effect on 1 August 2021.