Performers have a right to equitable remuneration for the public performance and broadcast of their recordings.
The summer is no longer quiet for the communications departments of most public sector organizations across the Netherlands! The age long practice of circulating hard copies of newspaper clippings among the employees of an organization is seriously compromised following a decision of the Court of appeal of Leeuwarden. On 13 July, the Court ruled that…
On 19 November 1992, the European Council adopted the Directive 92/100/EEC on rental right and lending right and on certain rights related to copyright in the field of intellectual property (now replaced by Directive 2006/115/EC), which provides an exclusive right to authorize or prohibit the rental and lending of originals and copies of copyrighted works….
In a somewhat surprising move, on 12 July 2011 the lower house of the Spanish Parliament urged the Government to abolish the so-called “canon digital” (the private copying levy on digital media) and replace it by a “less arbitrary and indiscriminate system” that provide rightsholders with a “fair and equitable remuneration based on the effective…
On 21 October 2010, the European Court of Justice rendered its judgement in case C-467/08 Padawan v SGAE, calling the current application of Spanish private copying levy into question. The judgement maintained that the Spanish private copying levy is abusive and that it does not meet with what Directive 2001/29/EC, on the harmonisation of certain…
As reported by the Dutch commentator Lucie Guibault in her recent Blogpost the Dutch government (in the person of the secretary of state, Fred Teeven) plans to restrict the private copying limitation. Downloads from “obviously illegal sources” shall be declared unlawful. In Germany such a rule exists already, implemented in the course of the first…
On 2 May 2011 the Ministry of Culture in Portugal made public a law proposal concerning the regulation of private copying levies (the English version of which is unfortunately not available). The law currently in force dates from 2004 and had in turn made some changes to the original law, dated from 1998. There have…
As mentioned in a previous post, on 22 March 2011 the Spanish Audiencia Nacional (High Court) annulled for formal reasons the Spanish ordinance that determines which digital reproduction equipment and media are subject to the private copying levies. The ordinance had been challenged before the Spanish courts by the Asociación de Internautas (an Internet users’…
Two contradictory legislative proposals have been quite recently submitted for discussion at the Belgian Parliament, which should implement solutions to the thorny file-sharing issue. On the one hand, Senators Morael and Pyryns proposed on 9 December 2010 [Doc 5-590/1] a law “aiming at adapting the perception of copyright to the technological evolution while preserving privacy…
On 2 March 2011 the Audiencia Provincial de Barcelona took note of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in the case Padawan v SGAE (C-467/08) and decided that the indiscriminate obligation of paying private copying levies as provided for in Art. 25 of the Spanish Ley de Propiedad Intelectual (Intellectual…
It is a cliché that collecting societies play a significant role in shaping the practice of copyright contracts, however the fact that it is a cliché does not make it less true. Therefore, legal rules concerning collecting societies are of huge interest for copyright lawyers, especially when they are new and offer an uncharted territory…
