Privacy, copyright infringement & intermediary liability – a tightrope walk

The year is 1999, and the internet as we know it is on the verge of a revolution. Napster the original bad boy of the internet, had just launched a peer-to-peer music-sharing website that irked the likes of Metallica. Three years of court battles later, Napster declared bankruptcy and shut down after being convicted on multiple counts of facilitating copyright infringement. The “Fear of the Dark” was real for intermediaries facilitating the circulation of infringing content.