©-LAW

Kat blocking Earlier this week, the High Court of England and Wales issued two website blocking orders, which set new precedent and are the expression of a further development in the rich UK website blocking jurisprudence.  The orders, which were issued by Miles J further to applications made by record labels that are members of  BPI , are the first orders ever granted in the UK to block access to, respectively, a cyberlocker and a number of streamripping sites/app. The decisions are also interesting from a broader, EU perspective, in that the judge considered that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is unlikely to follow the position adopted by Advocate General (AG) Saugmandsgaard Øe in his 2020  Opinion , when it decides  YouTube/Cyando , C-682/18 and C-683/18  [Katpost  here ]. Capitol Records and Others v BT and Others : cyberlocker operators The  first order  was made further to an application by record companies, which are memb...

Merpel's favourite platforms Nearly two years have passed since the adoption of the  Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market 2019/790 (DSM Directive) . As it was probably bound to happen, the discussion of its content – notably of its Article 17 – is no less heated now than in 2016-2019, that is the period between the release of the  Commission’s original Proposal  and the adoption of this piece of EU copyright legislation. Member States have until 7 June 2021 to transpose the Directive into their own laws, though delays are likely to occur due to a number of reasons. Besides the disruption caused by the ongoing COVID pandemic, the publication of the Commissions’ Guidance on the application of Article 17 (see Article 17(10)) has been also postponed to a later time than originally expected. In the meantime, different positions have emerged regarding the interpretation and application of this important and complex provision, with contributions made by interest g...