In 2011, Costa Rica enacted the Regulation on the limitation of liability of service providers for infringement of Copyright and Related Rights in accordance with Article 15.11.27 of the Free Trade Agreement Dominican Republic-Central America-United States.  This provides for Internet service provider liability exclusions along the lines of the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  It provides, however, in Articles 11 to 14 that a right holder may send a notice of infringement to an ISP through the networks or systems of which his rights have been infringed.

If the notice provides the stipulated details, the ISP must forward it to the user.  the user must then either remove the material in question or respond stating his intention to resolve the matter through the competent judicial authorities.  If the user fails to do either, the ISP may block access to the material or terminate the user’s account, in accordance with its published repeat infringer policy (see Article 6(a)).  There appears, however, to be no obligation on the ISP to do so, albeit it may by this stage have lost the protection of the safe harbours as a result of the information received.

Article 16 provides that the court may order the removal or blocking of infringing content by the relevant service provider.  Article 19 provides for the disclosure of account information under judicial order.