Creative Commons

This dissertation was written as part of the LLM in Transnational and European Commercial Law and Alternative Dispute Resolution and Energy Law at the International Hellenic University. Nowadays, the technological evolution of the internet is so great, that it influences the whole market. On the one hand, the internet is considered to be a factor of advancement and of promotion of intellectual property. On the other hand, internet has been approved to be a threat for copyright and intellectual property rights in general from which they must be legally protected worldwide. Τhe peer to peer networks and the illegal sharing of copyright works through them led the copyright industry to the searching of methods in order to fight the financial loss that this practice has caused. This thesis is a review of the protection of copyright through the Internet and of the legislation used by countries and the European Union in order to solve the problems being created. It intends to examine the adequacy of the European legal regime for the protection of copyright and related rights by analyzing the role of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the fight against piracy. As in every controversial legal issue, the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) will be a guide to examine the recent developments and tendencies, especially when there are conflicting interests like the clash among copyright protection and other fundamental human rights, such as the right to the protection of personal data.