According to this decision by the EU Court of Justice, "The owner of an online social network cannot be obliged to install a general filtering system, covering all its users, in order to prevent the unlawful use of musical and audio-visual work."
I think that this is a great step forward in regards to Internet freedoms. Such a measure can prevent or safeguard against, in Europe at least, the enforcement of laws such as ACTA, PIPA, and SOPA, which if passed, will place the responsibility of policing for illegal content onto website owners.
For websites such as Facebook or Youtube, this would be an enormous, if not impossible task. It is undeniable that such laws threaten Internet freedoms. Although some people agree that illegal content has no place on the Internet (others believe that it is not illegal at all and that its distribution and use is considered to be a form of civil disobedience), the measures that would by enacted by these hypothetical laws are too harsh for our modern world. Large websites, which I assume make up a vast portion of the average Internet user's browsing content, would be shut down for the acts of individual users who have no affiliation with the company or website in question, other than that the users have accounts with the hosts.
I believe that it should be up to the administration of websites to decide what is not allowed on a website, as long as it is of no harm to others. If real child pornography appears on a website, that should not be allowed and the government of the appropriate country should be involved (through contact by the website administration - and if it is unreported, then action is necessary). In this case, real people (the child or children involved) are being harmed, not only physically, but in the fact that their likenesses appear on the Internet in such a cruel and violating fashion. There should be little tolerance on this matter. This is a side point in the matter, as the content which is targeted by laws like ACTA, SOPA, and PIPA most falls under copyright concerns.
While it is important for an artist to have copyright or some sort of right over his or her own work, the music and movie industry are pushing too far in this matter. Perhaps they are losing money through piracy, perhaps not. The point is, they still make enormous sums of money. I believe that bubbles in the economy should not come about, as the only outcome is burst - which harms basically everybody involved. Although the bloating of the entertainment industry has not been referred to as a bubble in popular culture, I believe it is. It's disgusting that these people have so much money when people are starving all over the planet. As it stands, I have no sympathy for these companies and fully absolve these ridiculous excuses for law they wish.
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