EU: Can sharing a Facebook post get you sued for copyright infringement?

The case, SHR Germany GmbH v RL (Case C-30/26), arose from a beauty salon operator in Germany sharing an existing Facebook post in a private group with approximately 7,800 members. The original post contained a link to a website that used a portrait photograph without the copyright holder's permission. When sharing the post, the salon operator added a brief comment: "If you buy cheap, you buy twice." She did not create the photograph, upload it or place the link herself. She simply pressed the "share" button that Facebook provides to every user. 

SHR Germany, the company claiming rights to the photograph, sued, arguing that even the act of sharing the post rendered the defendant liable for copyright infringement. The German court hearing the case was uncertain whether existing EU copyright rules extend that far and, in January 2026, referred seven questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for clarification. 

The core legal question is simple: does sharing a post on a social network count as "communicating a work to the public"? Under EU law, specifically the InfoSoc Directive of 2001, copyright holders have the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any "communication to the public" of their works. That phrase in essence means making a protected work such as a photo, song or text accessible to people who would not otherwise have seen it.

The closest precedent is a 2016 CJEU ruling known as GS Media (Case C-160/15). In that case, a news website deliberately posted hyperlinks to leaked photographs. The CJEU held that knowingly linking to illegally published content can infringe copyright, and that when linking is done for profit, knowledge of illegality is presumed. But the German court pointed out that sharing a post on Facebook is very different from writing an editorial article with an embedded hyperlink. Social media communication is fast-paced, casual, and often carried out with a few taps on a phone. Users generally do not pause to consider whether a post they are sharing might contain material that infringes someone's copyright. 

The court also highlighted a curious paradox: the original post was visible to all Facebook users, while the shared version reached only the smaller audience of a private group. In other words, sharing may actually have narrowed the audience rather than expanded it, which sits uneasily with the idea that the defendant exposed the photograph to a "new public". 

What is at stake? 

If the CJEU rules that social media sharing can constitute copyright infringement under existing principles, millions of users and businesses who routinely share third-party content could, in theory, face legal exposure. This would be particularly problematic for small businesses and sole traders who use personal social media accounts for a mixture of private and promotional purposes, such as the defendant in the case at hand. Conversely, if the CJEU limits the reach of its earlier case law, copyright holders may find it harder to pursue infringement claims in the social media context.

A ruling is likely within the next one to two years. Whatever the CJEU decides, the judgment will set an authoritative benchmark for how copyright rules apply to the everyday mechanics of social media: pressing "share" or even endorsing a post by adding a comment. For anyone who uses these platforms for business, the outcome is worth watching.