The Austrian Supreme Court held that YouTube – as a host service provider – was not responsible for copyright infringements by its users as long as it was not put on notice of the infringements (17. 9. 2021, 4 Ob 132/21x). For monetizing uploaded videos, the uploading user has to confirm that they have read…

Part I of this post discussed Grand Chamber judgment on the validity of Article 17 CDSMD and explained the need for a more concrete strategy to meet the challenge of implementing that provision in national laws. This part II discusses the growth of public regulators as a check on the rise of private power in…

This two-part blog post offers both an evaluation of the current regulatory challenge faced by MS implementing Art. 17 CDSMD after the CJEU’s ruling in Case C-401/19, as well as a fresh perspective on tackling the implementation challenge ahead. Part I of this post provides context to our analysis, explaining the need for a more…

Article 17 is here to stay, but most national implementations fail to meet the fundamental rights standards developed by the Court in its judgment. Tuesday’s long-awaited ruling in Case C-401/19 finally brings some clarity to the almost three-year-long discussion about the implementation of Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive (DSM…

“Web3 cannot and should not be reduced to blockchain when the real shift is towards user ownership of digital assets… This definitional shift focuses attention on what assets can be legally owned and the meaning of ownership “rights,” more generally, in the emerging digital spaces of web3.”   The Rift Over Web3 The week before…

Fundamental Rights are the constants in many constitutional orders. They provide stability, continuity in values and encapsulate the normative skeleton of a society. Especially in times of change, they serve as guiding principles for citizens, governments and, if push comes to shove, the judiciary. Amongst the many examples in which fundamental rights have demonstrated their…

At the beginning of 2021, half a year before the implementation deadline of the DSM directive, only a single EU member state (the Netherlands) had passed a full implementation of the DSM directive. By the date of the implementation deadline a mere three Member States had fully implemented the directive, and by the end of…

At the end of 2021, YouTube’s first Copyright Transparency Report 2021 (“Report”) was published. It is interesting to look at this Report against the background of the 2019 EU rules for the liability of platforms like YouTube through the famous Art. 17 DSM Directive 2019/790 (“DSMD”). But first let’s take a look at Mars (the…

On 15 December 2020, the European Commission submitted a proposal for a Regulation on a Single Market For Digital Services (Digital Services Act, DSA) and amending Directive 2000/31/EC. In November 2021, the Council of the European Union reached agreement on an amended version of this proposal, and on 20 December 2021, the European Parliament’s Committee…

Parts 1 to 3 of this post (originally published in “Auteurs & Media”) summarising case law of the German Bundesgerichtshof from 2015 to 2019 are available here, here and here.         VII. Copyright contract law (Sections 31 et seqq. UrhG) Right of remuneration (Sections 32 et seqq. UrhG) German copyright law stipulates…