CJEU rules that private copying also applies in the cloud and warns against thinking that everything is communication to the public
A few days ago the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rendered its judgment in C-433/20 Austro-Mechana , ruling that the notion of reproduction ‘on any medium’ extends to the cloud and, therefore, that private copying under Article 5(2)(b) of the InfoSoc Directive also applies in that context. Kat cloud ... The judgment is in line with last year’s Opinion of Advocate General (AG) Hogan [ here ] and clarifies the treatment of private copying in the context of cloud computing, this being something that had been previously asked to the Court (in the context of the VCAST referral: here ), but which the CJEU did not expressly address, preferring instead to focus on the qualification of providers of cloud-based storage facilities that give access to protected content to users based in territories for which no licence is in place. Background This referral from Austria was made in the context of litigation be...