Copyright exceptions: clause 56 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill
Published on 25 May 2012 at 4:39 pm.
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Filed under Misc, Digital Britain, Copyright Infringement.
Author: Tony Ballard
What is it about copyright law that makes Governments of both left and right try to reform it without Parliamentary scrutiny?
A few years ago the Labour Government included a clause in what was to become the Digital Economy Act that would have conferred wide powers on Ministers to amend copyright law. This was supposed to help deal with the vexed problem of online infringement. It was a controversial proposal, to say the least, with comparisons being made with the powers wielded by Henry VIII and with the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill of 2006, described by one commentator as the Abolition of Parliament Bill. The Government responded to the criticisms by proposing that a Minister’s amendments should be subject to a super-affirmative Parliamentary procedure as a safeguard but eventually the clause was dropped. (more…)
Communication to the public: phonograms and equitable remuneration
Published on 16 Mar 2012 at 12:11 pm.
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Filed under Misc, Broadcasting, Internet, Digital rights, Communication.
Author: Tony Ballard
New but somewhat equivocal light has been cast on what “communication to the public” (“CTTP”) means in European copyright law by two judgments delivered by the Court of Justice on 15 March 2012 (Societa Consortile Fonografici (SCF) v Marco del Corso and Phonographic Performance (Ireland) Limited (PPIL) v Ireland). (more…)
UK copyright exceptions for digital retransmission of wireless broadcasts and for television in pubs: the beginning of the end
Published on 6 Mar 2012 at 11:49 am.
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Filed under Misc, Broadcasting, Digital rights, Copyright Infringement.
Author: Tony Ballard
In its response to the Hargreaves Review, the Government agreed with the Review’s central thesis. It said that the widest possible exceptions to copyright within the existing EU framework were likely to be beneficial to the UK. As work commences to see how far those exceptions can go within that framework, however, the courts have been finding that some of the existing exceptions already go too far. Where they go beyond what is permitted, they are likely to be repealed. Little attention has yet been paid to this upcoming retrograde motion.
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Appeals from ATVOD: is Ofcom discouraging full debate of the regulatory issues?
Published on 30 Jan 2012 at 1:35 pm.
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Filed under Misc, On-demand, AVMS Directive.
Author: Tony Ballard
One of the key features of the AVMS Directive is to require the UK and other Member States to regulate TV-like programme services on the internet, including on-demand. Quite what that means and what services are in scope is not entirely clear from the Directive. Some people must have hoped that transposition into UK law of the requirements of the Directive would throw light on the uncertainties but if so they will have been disappointed. At least so far as on-demand services are concerned, the AVMS Directive has been transposed warts and all. (more…)
Airfield and the communication to the public right
Published on 16 Nov 2011 at 3:33 pm.
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Filed under Misc, Broadcasting, Digital rights, Copyright Licensing, Communication.
Author: Tony Ballard
In a judgment of remarkable simplicity of purpose and obscurity of expression, the Court of Justice has taken the next step forward in the delineation of the copyright concept of communication to the public.
In Airfield and anor v SABAM (Case C-431/09), 13 October 2011, and a parallel action involving Agicoa, the Court decided that satellite platform operators may need to seek separate authorisation from rightsholders to provide their customers with access to broadcast channels carried on their platform, on the basis that providing access in this way is a separate communication to the public. The main reason for the decision is that the platform operators’ customers are likely to be a “new” public, that is to say a public wider than that targeted by the original broadcaster and therefore a public that was not taken into account by the rightsholders when they granted rights to that broadcaster. (more…)
Published on 16 Nov 2011 at 3:33 pm.
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Filed under Misc.
“Appropriate” remuneration for copyright owners: an unexpected consequence of the pub football cases
Published on 12 Oct 2011 at 4:44 pm.
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Filed under Misc, Broadcasting, Internet, Geoblocking, Territorial Exclusivity.
Author: Tony Ballard
Copyright owners reading the judgment of the Court of Justice in FAPL v QC Leisure and Murphy v Media Protection Services can be forgiven for being startled by the Court having held that copyright owners are entitled only to reasonable remuneration for their rights. Does this foreshadow price regulation of royalties? (more…)
Copyright clearances and the internet
Published on 30 Aug 2011 at 2:19 pm.
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Filed under Misc, Copyright Licensing.
Author: Tony Ballard
A new dimension has been added to the vexed question of internet copyright clearances.
It had seemed that the internet was a domain in which the use of content would be regulated primarily by the (relatively) new communication to the public right, unlike traditional forms of exploitation such as book publishing and even film distribution which are regulated primarily by the reproduction right. This development seemed entirely appropriate in the new world of networked distribution, even though some fundamental issues remain to be worked out, not least of which is the question where the act of communication takes place, which has been referred to the Court of Justice in Football Dataco v Sportradar.
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Goods and services in the digital domain
Published on 17 May 2011 at 3:31 pm.
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Filed under Digital Britain, Digital rights.
Author: Tony Ballard & Nicolas Murfett
Is the supply of digital content a supply of goods or of services? Until recently, few would have had any difficulty in giving an unqualified answer to this question. Recent developments, however, suggest that the position may be changing.
The distinction between goods and services underlies a good deal of current law and regulation. In IP law, for example, the exhaustion of rights principle and the prohibition on parallel imports applies to goods but not to services. In consumer law, the consumer’s rights differ according to whether the consumer is buying goods or services. (more…)
Geoblocking: a hardcore restriction or objectively justifiable?
Published on 6 Apr 2011 at 4:23 pm.
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Filed under Misc, Broadcasting, Internet, Digital rights, Geoblocking.
Author: Tony Ballard
Addicts of overseas soap operas who live in the UK will be familiar with the difficulties in getting internet access to the latest episodes. They may be available on a site in the country of origin, such as France or the US, but access is often blocked. This is because the overseas website, when receiving a request for the episode from a UK computer, will look up the computer’s IP (Internet Protocol) address in publicly available tables and, finding it among the addresses allocated to an ISP located in or serving the UK, will decline the request. The blocking can be circumvented via proxy sites or other technical measures but in general the underlying geolocation software limits access to users who are located in the appropriate territory or region. (more…)