In an interview with PressGiochi.it, an online news publication dedicated to the Italian public gaming sector, Attorney Stefano Sbordoni commented on the recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which effectively upheld the €750,000 fine imposed by AGCOM on Google after a content creator published a series of YouTube videos promoting online casinos and gambling offers (see the article published on 24 July). According to the well-known Rome-based lawyer, internationally recognised as one of Italy’s leading experts in the public gaming sector, “the Court of Justice confirms that so-called hosting providers are neutral with respect to the content they allow users to publish in their capacity as hosting providers, provided that they have no involvement in that content.” However, Sbordoni continued, “where they enter into profit-sharing agreements with content creators (and therefore, as in the case examined by the Court, distribute content that constitutes a direct source of profit), they are no longer merely interested parties but are also under a duty to verify that content”. According to Mr Sbordoni, a decisive factor for the Luxembourg judges was the existence of a commercial agreement between Google and the content creator governing the sharing of advertising revenues. “The Court of Justice,” he noted, “already acknowledged, on the basis of the findings referred by the Italian Council of State, that the agreement provided for a sharing of profits.” As a consequence, in Sbordoni’s view, the activities carried out by the hosting provider do not fall within the liability exemption set out in Article 14 of Directive 2000/31/EC, and the companies concerned may therefore be held liable for such content. Mr Sbordoni further observed that the CJEU attaches no importance to the manner in which the hosting provider carries out content monitoring. “The provider is liable whether the checks are performed by human reviewers or by automated algorithms,” he explained. Once again, according to Sbordoni, the decisive element is that the provider has entered into an agreement under which it derives profit from the content—based on its dissemination, number of views, and similar metrics—and is therefore deemed to have full awareness of the nature of the content being published. With regard to the amount of the fine, Sbordoni recalled that “the Italian Council of State did not raise any questions concerning the proportionality of the sanction, and therefore this was not an issue examined by the Court of Justice.” In any event, he added, “proportionality is a separate and distinct issue. AGCOM undoubtedly calibrated the amount of the fine, especially since the Dignity Decree provides for an administrative penalty of €50,000 for each infringement. In Google’s case, the Authority challenged the publication of 630 videos; had the statutory penalty been applied strictly to each individual infringement, the overall fine would have exceeded €30 million.” (Source: PressGiochi).