The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has made a very important decision in the case of Stichting Brein v Ziggo (C‑610/15), which involves blocking access to The Pirate Bay (TPB) and the legal nature of torrent files. This case follows a CJEU decision on multimedia players containing Read more…
The European Court oh Human Rights (ECtHR) has tackled again the tricky subject of intermediary liability in the case of Rolf Anders Daniel Pihl v. Sweden. This follows two controversial previous decisions in Delfi v Estonia and MTE v Hungary. The case began on September 2011 when a blog post Read more…
People familiar with Creative Commons have been worried recently about a litigation in the United States regarding the non-commercial element in the licences, which had the potential to negatively affect the integrity of the licensing environment by narrowly defining non-commercial use. The case is between Great Minds, a non-profit organisation Read more…
The Court of Justice of the European Union has made a troubling ruling regarding open wifi spots in the case of McFadden v Sony Music (C-484/14). This just following the also problematic case of GS Media makes it a rather bad week for balance in copyright. The case involves Tobias Read more…
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has once more helped to answer one of the most puzzling aspects of Internet regulation, where do things happen online? In particular, they have answered where can a copyright collective management agency sue to try to recover missing royalties. The case Read more…
At 7 seconds, this happy llama is thankfully not infringing.* How much do you need to reproduce a video or broadcast in order to infringe copyright? In the age of Vine, Periscope and animated gifs, this question has become more important than ever. We now may have a partial answer Read more…
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has revisited the issue of liability for Internet intermediaries in the case of Magyar Tartalomszolgáltatók Egyesülete and Index.Hu v Hungary. This is the second time in less than a year that the ECHR deals with this issue, as it had already produced a Read more…
A judge in California has dismissed a copyright case brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), where the animal rights organisation claimed that it represented the monkey that took the famous selfie depicted above. The case is that of Naruto v Slater, where PETA sued British photographer Read more…
Whenever I feel like criticising the European intermediary liability system, I look at Australia and any negativity quickly passes away. It has long been commented that while the USA, Europe, and many other countries have limitation of liability regimes in place, Australia seems to have managed to bypass most legislative Read more…
During the last decade, a common attack against open source licenses from their opponents stated that the documents were invalid because they had not been tested in court. This type of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) seemed to be very popular with certain unimaginative legal types unwilling to fathom innovative solutions. Read more…