The right of making available to the public is part of the right of communication to the public set out in Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC (the Copyright Directive or Infosoc Directive), which requires that EU member states must provide authors with the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any communication to the public of their works by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public of their works in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.
By Mireille van Eechoud, Institute for Information Law (IViR) Of the many questions addressed by the Court in its Painer judgment (Case C-145/10) the most impact will probably be on the construction of an EU wide originality criterion for copyright works. Infopaq, BSA and Murphy went before, seemingly extending the originality standard implicit in the…
On the 28 of October the European Commission adopted a Recommendation on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation. The Recommendation follows up on a similar Recommendation from 2006, updating for new developments such as the launch in 2008 of Europeana and the adoption of the Commission’s proposal for a Directive…
This sentence summarizes quite well the decision of the Antwerp Court of Appeal of 26 September 2011 which it is abstracted from. The Belgian Anti-piracy Federation filed a cease and desist action against Telenet and Belgacom, two Belgian ISPs, in order to make them block The Pirate Bay’s websites in their respective networks. In first…
Court of Appeal The Hague, 28 June 2011, Stichting Leenrecht v. VOB Lending rights. Plaintiff, the Dutch Association for Lending Rights, argues that an extended loan of library books should be considered a new loan and that therefore public lending rights are due. The Court of Appeal The Hague disagrees and concludes by referring to…
UK: ITV Broadcasting Ltd v TV Catchup Ltd High Court of England and Wales (Patents Court), 18 July 2011 Live-streaming: In a case on internet live-streaming retransmission of TV broadcasts and films, the High Court ruled that the introduction in the UK Copyright Act of a general right of communication to the public with respect…
Finland: Finreactor I, Supreme Court (Korkein oikeus), 30 June 2010. Filesharing: The defendants were administrators of the Finreactor BitTorrent file sharing network. The networks’ users could illegally download copyrighted works. The network was built so that the files were not available on the Finreactor’s site but resided on users’ own computers. Finreactor had a tracker…
The question, whether software licences for computer programs that were purchased in an intangible form (via download from the sellers’ server) can be resold by the first acquirer and used by the second buyer without consent of the right holder, has to be interpreted in light of the computer program directive 2009/24/EG. A full summary…
It cannot have evaded the notice of anyone interested in copyright matters that Judge Chin at a New York federal district court recently has rejected the so-called Google Book Settlement (GBS). While holding that “the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many”, Judge Chin argued that the GBS…
Paintings that were abandoned and left in a loft were not subject to free utilization. The copyright in the paintings was thus not exhausted. A summary of this case will be posted on http://www.KluwerIPCases.com
Survey:
HADOPI, cultural goods and Internet use: The French users’ practices and perceptions (“Hadopi, biens culturels et usages d’Internet: pratiques et perceptions des internautes français”), presented on 23 January 2011 at the MIDEM (Marché International du Disque et de l’Edition Musicale- International Market for Records and Musical Edition): http://www.hadopi.fr/download/hadopiT0.pdf
Press
Press releases:
Etude de la HADOPI sur le téléchargement: des chiffres providentiels, ZDNet.fr
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/etude-de-la-hadopi-sur-le-telechargement-des-chiffres-providentiels-39757755.htm
Midem: un internaute français sur deux pirate, La Tribune.fr
http://www.latribune.fr/technos-medias/medias/20110123trib000594860/midem-un-internaute-francais-sur-deux-pirate-.html
Selon une étude de l’HADOPI, 49% des internautes ont eu recours “au moins une fois à un usage illicite de biens culturels”, Le Monde.fr, Blogs
http://midem.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/01/24/selon-une-etude-de-l%E2%80%99hadopi-49-des-internautes-ont-eu-recours-%C2%AB-au-moins-une-fois-a-un-usage-illicite-de-biens-culturels-%C2%BB/
