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…
The Court of Justice of the European Union has produced a landmark decision in Maximillian Schrems v Data Protection Commissioner (C‑362/14). The ruling may have huge economic and political repercussions for the tech industry in the next months. This is a case that requires some context if you are unfamiliar Read more…
Last month we reported about a decision by the High Court of Justice that declared that a new law making it legal to make private copies of media you own contravened EU copyright law. As the decision was part of a judicial review procedure, and the judge asked the parties Read more…
The High Court of Justice has declared s1 of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 to be unlawful and contrary to European Law. The article in question is part of emergency surveillance legislation enacted last year by the coalition government. The Court was responding to a judicial review Read more…
This has been a bad week for logic and reason. Or a good week for insane rulings, depending on your take on life. Last year we had a series of copyright reforms, including an exception for private copying; but now the British music industry has managed to get the High Read more…
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has dealt a blow to existing intermediary liability rules in Europe in the case of Delfi v Estonia. The decision of the Grand Chamber reaffirms an earlier decision by the first section of the court. For years we have had a system of Read more…
It has been often remarked in these pages that we seem to be going back in time when it comes to copyright case law. In particular, the fact that the Court of Justice of the European Union continues to decide cases about linking seems to me to be a baffling Read more…
As we reported last year, an English court recognised the existence of a tort of privacy (more accurately, the tort of misuse of private information) in the case of Vidal-Hall v Google. The case involved a group of Google users who sued the search engine alleging that it had misused Read more…
The Court of Justice of the European Union has produced an interesting decision regarding copyright levies in the case of Copydan Båndkopi v Nokia Danmark (C‑463/12). Some European countries have established a copyright levy scheme for blank media, this means that whenever there is a sale of a product that Read more…