On December 8th 2016, Advocate General (AG) Campos Sánchez-Bordona delivered his opinion in Case C‑527/15- Stichting Brein v Jack Frederik Wullems, acting under the name of Filmspeler (Filmspeler). This opinion may pave the way for a broader interpretation of the concept of ´communication to the public´ under Article 3 (1) of the InfoSoc Directive. By…

The European Commission keeps sending us surprises. After December’s Communication on Modernizing Copyright, which contained a mixed bag of copyright goodies, we had expected just about anything but the announcement that followed on March 23rd. The European Commission has launched a public open consultation on ‘the possible extension’ of neighbouring rights to publishers. As we…

The case of Svensson Retriever has shown that a hyperlink to a work freely available on a website accessible for all internet users is not a new communication to the public in the sense of Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC. However, the preliminary questions posed to the ECJ by an interlocutory judgment of September 30…

On 26 March, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) handed down Case C-279/13 C More Entertainment, the latest decision regarding the right of communication to the public in the context of websites providing links to content. In this particular case, C More provided live broadcasts of ice hockey matches on the Internet for payment of…

“In other words, the initial communication by the copyright holder already encompassed the potential public that subsequently accessed the content via the links” The long-awaited judgment of the CJEU in the Svensson case, judgment of 13 February 2013 in (C-466/12). The legal definition of internet links has been a widely-discussed subject in recent times, pitting…

“Yet, in contrast to the legislative measures that had been previously contemplated, this deal is only of a stand-alone character and will not affect the situation of smaller aggregators.” A while back we reported on the clash between search giant Google and media organisations in, among other countries, France over the former’s news aggregating service…

“This finding could have been considered predictable, if it wasn’t for  a special provision in the Greek Constitution that safeguards participation in the information society.” Is obliging ISPs to cut off internet access to specific copyright infringing websites compatible with the Greek Constitution? That is one of the main questions that were answered by the…

“According to the current formulation of the draft law, material quoted by humans for commentary and analysis, as opposed to that automatically selected by a computer, may be copied freely.” The link wars have once again broken out in Europe. In August, the German cabinet gave its backing to a draft law allowing news publishers…