3. Article 8(3) of Directive 2001/29 must be interpreted as not precluding a situation under national law whereby a copyright holder or the holder of a related right may not obtain an injunction against an intermediary whose service has been used by a third party to infringe his or her right, that intermediary having had no knowledge or awareness of that infringement, within the meaning of Article 14(1)(a) of Directive 2000/31, unless, before court proceedings are commenced, that infringement has first been notified to that intermediary and the latter has failed to intervene expeditiously in order to remove the content in question or to block access to it and to ensure that such infringements do not recur. It is, however, for the national courts to satisfy themselves, when applying such a condition, that that condition does not result in the actual cessation of the infringement being delayed in such a way as to cause disproportionate damage to the rightholder.

1. Article 15(1) of Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (Directive on privacy and electronic communications), as amended by Directive 2009/136/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2009, read in the light of Articles 7, 8 and 11 and Article 52(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, must be interpreted as precluding legislative measures which, for the purposes laid down in Article 15(1), provide, as a preventive measure, for the general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data. By contrast, Article 15(1) of Directive 2002/58, as amended by Directive 2009/136, read in the light of Articles 7, 8 and 11 and Article 52(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, does not preclude legislative measures that:

- allow, for the purposes of safeguarding national security, recourse to an instruction requiring providers of electronic communications services to retain, generally and indiscriminately, traffic and location data in situations where the Member State concerned is confronted with a serious threat to national security that is shown to be genuine and present or foreseeable, where the decision imposing such an instruction is subject to effective review, either by a court or by an independent administrative body whose decision is binding, the aim of that review being to verify that one of those situations exists and that the conditions and safeguards which must be laid down are observed, and where that instruction may be given only for a period that is limited in time to what is strictly necessary, but which may be extended if that threat persists;

- provide, for the purposes of safeguarding national security, combating serious crime and preventing serious threats to public security, for the targeted retention of traffic and location data which is limited, on the basis of objective and non-discriminatory factors, according to the categories of persons concerned or using a geographical criterion, for a period that is limited in time to what is strictly necessary, but which may be extended;

- provide, for the purposes of safeguarding national security, combating serious crime and preventing serious threats to public security, for the general and indiscriminate retention of IP addresses assigned to the source of an Internet connection for a period that is limited in time to what is strictly necessary;

- provide, for the purposes of safeguarding national security, combating crime and safeguarding public security, for the general and indiscriminate retention of data relating to the civil identity of users of electronic communications systems;

- allow, for the purposes of combating serious crime and, a fortiori, safeguarding national security, recourse to an instruction requiring providers of electronic communications services, by means of a decision of the competent authority that is subject to effective judicial review, to undertake, for a specified period of time, the expedited retention of traffic and location data in the possession of those service providers,

provided that those measures ensure, by means of clear and precise rules, that the retention of data at issue is subject to compliance with the applicable substantive and procedural conditions and that the persons concerned have effective safeguards against the risks of abuse.

2. Article 15(1) of Directive 2002/58, as amended by Directive 2009/136, read in the light of Articles 7, 8 and 11 and Article 52(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, must be interpreted as not precluding national rules which requires providers of electronic communications services to have recourse, first, to the automated analysis and real-time collection, inter alia, of traffic and location data and, second, to the real-time collection of technical data concerning the location of the terminal equipment used, where:

- recourse to automated analysis is limited to situations in which a Member State is facing a serious threat to national security which is shown to be genuine and present or foreseeable, and where recourse to such analysis may be the subject of an effective review, either by a court or by an independent administrative body whose decision is binding, the aim of that review being to verify that a situation justifying that measure exists and that the conditions and safeguards that must be laid down are observed; and where

- recourse to the real-time collection of traffic and location data is limited to persons in respect of whom there is a valid reason to suspect that they are involved in one way or another in terrorist activities and is subject to a prior review carried out either by a court or by an independent administrative body whose decision is binding in order to ensure that such real-time collection is authorised only within the limits of what is strictly necessary. In cases of duly justified urgency, the review must take place within a short time.

3. Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market ('Directive on electronic commerce'), must be interpreted as not being applicable in the field of the protection of the confidentiality of communications and of natural persons as regards the processing of personal data in the context of information society services, such protection being governed by Directive 2002/58, as amended by Directive 2009/136, or by Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC, as appropriate. Article 23(1) of Regulation 2016/679, read in the light of Articles 7, 8 and 11 and Article 52(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, must be interpreted as precluding national legislation which requires that providers of access to online public communication services and hosting service providers retain, generally and indiscriminately, inter alia, personal data relating to those services.

4. A national court may not apply a provision of national law empowering it to limit the temporal effects of a declaration of illegality, which it is bound to make under that law, in respect of national legislation imposing on providers of electronic communications services - with a view to, inter alia, safeguarding national security and combating crime - an obligation requiring the general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data that is incompatible with Article 15(1) of Directive 2002/58, as amended by Directive 2009/136, read in the light of Articles 7, 8 and 11 and Article 52(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Article 15(1), interpreted in the light of the principle of effectiveness, requires national criminal courts to disregard information and evidence obtained by means of the general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data in breach of EU law, in the context of criminal proceedings against persons suspected of having committed criminal offences, where those persons are not in a position to comment effectively on that information and that evidence and they pertain to a field of which the judges have no knowledge and are likely to have a preponderant influence on the findings of fact.