©-LAW

Wow, what a rolling coaster of emotions the past few days have been for EU- based  copyright enthusiasts!  After last week's  GS Media  decision   [ here ,  here ,  here ]  in Luxembourg and yesterday's  copyright package  in Brussels, today is back again to Luxembourg for the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in  Mc Fadden , C-484/14   [the decision is not yet available on the Curia website, but here's the  press release ]  [UPDATE at 11:12: the judgment is  now available  on the Curia website] This blog has followed this case for a while, after  reporting  for the first time on this reference for a preliminary ruling from  th e Landgericht München I (Regional Court, Munich I, Germany)  in late 2014 (and also  hosting  the open 'Save our open WiFi' letter penned by the  Electronic Frontier Foundation  in 2015). What is this case abou...

Further to the  proposal for a regulation on cross-border portability of  online  content  services  in late 2015, the European Commission has just unveiled its  new set of proposals  to ameliorate EU copyright and achieve a fully functioning digital single market. These - among other things - include proposals for a new  directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market  and a  regulation on certain online transmissions of broadcasting organisations and retransmissions . Both instruments, if adopted in their current form, will have a deep impact on the EU copyright framework, particularly with regard to online uses of copyright works, responsibilities of hosting providers, users’ freedoms, and authors’ contracts. A more detailed analysis of relevant documents will be provided soon: stay tuned! But here's an immediate question: Is the new package different from the leaked versions  [ here  and  here ] ? Well, yes...

Readers may remember that a few months ago I  published  a table that I had prepared for my students at the University of Southampton, attempting to summarise the position of the Court of Justice of the European Union as regards linking to protected content. Further to this week's  GS Media   decision   [ here  and  here ] , here's an updated version of my 'linking table'  [check out also this useful  tool  prepared and shared by Martin Husovec the same day of the  GS Media  decision] : [Originally published on The IPKat on 10 September 2016]

As  r eported  in this morning's (super-)breaking news post, the Court of Justice of  the  European Uni on (CJEU) has finally issued its  decision  in  GS Media , C-160/15. The Court held that  Article 3(1) of the  InfoSoc Directive  "must be interpreted as meaning that, in order to establish whether the fact of posting, on a website, hyperlinks to protected works, which are freely available on another website without the consent of the copyright holder, constitutes a ‘communication to the public’ within the meaning of that provision, it is to be determined whether those links are provided without the pursuit of financial gain by a person who did not know or could not reasonably have known the illegal nature of the publication of those works on that other website or whether, on the contrary, those links are provided for such a purpose, a situation in which that knowledge must be presumed." In other words, the provision of a hyper...

The pieces of the (copyright) puzzle are being composed day after day.  After  the  leaked  draft version  of the Commission Staff Working Document - Impact Assessment on the modernisation of EU copyright rules and yesterday's  Kat-exclusive   draft version of the forthcoming   Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market, today - thanks to another Katfriend - is the turn of the draft Communication from the Commission on  Promoting a fair and efficient European copyright-based economy in the Digital Single Market . The Communication, together with the Impact Assessment, the Directive, and a proposal for a Regulation  [leaked  here ]  containing a review of the  SatCab Directive   [ here  and see further below]  should be part of the copyright package that the Commission will unveil later this month. A new Regulation This new Communication will accompany the Directive on copyright in the Digital S...