For a Service Provider

This decision sheds important light on your property law. Here is what it changes for you.

The situation

In order for a service provider on the Internet to fall within the scope of Article 14 of Directive 2000/31, it is essential that they be an 'intermediary service provider' as intended by the legislature in the context of Section 4 of Chapter II of that directive. This is not the case where that provider, instead of limiting itself to a neutral provision of service by means of purely technical and automatic processing of data supplied by its customers, plays an active role of such a kind as to give it knowledge or control of those data. The operator plays an active role when it provides assistance consisting in particular in optimising the presentation of the offers for sale in question or in promoting them. A judgment that holds that a tenant could not have been unaware of the warnings and information given to persons wishing to list a property for rent on the Airbnb platform and that the landlady fails to demonstrate that Airbnb Ireland acts as a publisher subject to a general liability regime, deprives its decision of a legal basis, without examining whether, on the one hand, through the set of binding rules to which the ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’ must agree to submit both before the publication of an advertisement and during the execution of the transaction, and whose compliance it is able to verify, Airbnb does not exercise an influence over the content of the offers and over the behaviour of the users of its platform, nor, on the other hand, whether, by granting some advertisers the status of ‘superhost’ and ensuring the promotion of their offers, it does not play an active role of such a kind as to confer upon it knowledge or control of the offers posted on its platform, thereby preventing it from being able to claim the status of hosting provider.

What the law says

This decision confirms the fundamental principles of property law.

Key takeaways

• Scrupulously respect the statutory time limits for appeals
• Keep all your supporting documents (title deeds, instruments, correspondence)
• Anticipate: preventive legal advice is always less expensive than litigation

For an analysis of your situation: 30-min consultation at €45 with Maître Zakine.