In the last few months of 2020 there have been further developments in Italy with regards to private and administrative enforcement against illicit distribution of copyright content over the Internet. 1. New Italian case law against Content Delivery Network (CDN) operators In a 2019 post on this Blog (here), we analysed the impact of illegal…
On 9 July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its judgment in Case C-264/19 Constantin Film Verleih v YouTube and Google Inc. Providing clarification on the scope of the copyright holder’s right to information, the CJEU decided that the notion of “address”, as set in Directive 2004/48/EC (Enforcement Directive), does…
Blocking injunctions against internet service providers (ISPs) remain one of the most interesting and litigated issues of contemporary copyright law. Though the concept of blocking injunctions per se is firmly established on the basis of CJEU case law (C‑324/09 L’Oréal, C-70/10 Scarlet Extended, C-360/10 Sabam and the seminal C-314/12 UPC Telekabel), blocking injunction jurisprudence in…
Germany was the main battleground over last year’s adoption of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive). After 200,000 people took to the streets against impending restrictions of their freedom of communication, the German government promised to avoid the use of upload filters in its national implementation. One of the…
There are not many surprises in the just released Copyright Office Section 512 Study. On virtually every issue about which the copyright industry had complained for the last two decades regarding the notice and takedown regime first established by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998, now codified in 17 U.S.C. § 512—from its…
On 6 August 2019 the Ondernemingsrechtbank Antwerpen (the court) submitted a request for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on a dispute between Mircom, a company registered under Cypriot law, and Telenet, a Belgian internet service provider whose users presumably shared copyright protected works via Bit-torrent. This case…
1. Italian Case Law on Fast Injunctions The impact of the illegal distribution of audiovisual content is growing (see, for Italy, the report issued in 2019 by FAPAV Federation for the protection of audiovisual and multimedia content). IP enforcement is an important part of the reaction against this illegal phenomenon. In 2019, some important improvements…
In the consolidated claims of Mircom & GoldenEye v Virgin Media, the claimants sought court orders from the UK court requiring Virgin Media to disclose the names and addresses of tens of thousands of its broadband subscribers who, the claimants say, had unlawfully downloaded pornographic films. The claimants required the individuals’ names and addresses in order…
The court granted a blocking injunction requiring a number of internet service providers to block their customers’ access to streaming servers where copyright infringements were taking place through the unauthorised streaming of live footage of sports events. Case date: 20 September 2018 Case number: [2018] EWHC 2443 (Ch) Court: High Court of Justice of England and…
The European Parliament has just approved the new text of the copyright directive, which will now go to the Council for a final vote on April 15th, 2019. This legislation not only modifies the copyright framework as set out in the Information Society Directive (Directive 2001/29/EC) but it will also modify the liability regime as…
