According to a ruling on January 15th by the Regional Court of Saarbrücken in Germany, a domain name registrar can in fact be held liable for copyright infringements of a website that it had registered if it’s been proven obvious that domain is being used for infringing transactions, and the registrar does nothing to prevent it. The case involved is between Universal Music and Key-Systems, the German based registrar of the domain name for h33t.com, which is a large torrent tracker site.

The case brought forward by Universal claims that nothing was done to prevent unauthorized distribution of Robin Thicke’s album Blurred Lines on the h33t.com torrent site. Key-Systems argued that it wasn’t responsible for the copyright infringement, but the court ruled that they as the registrar had a duty to investigate after being notified several times of the infringing activity and that they should take corrective action in cases like this where violations are obvious.

According to PC World, when Key-Systems refused to heed Universal’s demands, the music company sued them. Volker Greimann, Key-Systems’ general counsel stated, “The courts’ definition of what is obviously violating is however extremely broad and the duty to act is expanded to deactivation of the entire domain even if only one file or link is infringing.”

Key-Systems argued during the lawsuit that they operate similar to how DENIC does; they only provide a technical service. DENIC is the central registry for all domains under the .de top level domain. In a previous lawsuit involving DENIC, The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe had already ruled they were generally not liable for copyright violation unless the infringement was obvious and easily identifiable, even if they had been notified that copyright violations were taking place on a specific domain. In the case of h33t.com, the court ruled that the violations were "obvious" and easily identifiable.

If Key-Systems should choose to ignore this ruling, they can face a maximum fine of €250,000 (US $339,000). Key-Systems is currently considering their options for appeal.