http://blog.harbottle.com/dm A blog about Digital Media Law from the experts Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:33:58 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Author: Tony Ballard The decision of the Supreme Court on 17 April 2013 in PRCA v NLA (generally known as Meltwater) marks the outer limits of the new European copyright regime applying to the distribution of content in electronic form.  Mere reception is not an infringement. In recent years, the new regime ... http://blog.harbottle.com/dm/?p=63 Author: Tony Ballard A remarkable document emerged from the European Parliament at the end of January.  It is styled “DRAFT REPORT on connected TV”.  It is not, however, a report but consists of a motion for a resolution calling for radical regulatory change, along with an explanatory statement. Regulating connected ... http://blog.harbottle.com/dm/?p=61 Author: Tony Ballard The government is proposing that offshore providers of online gambling services should be licensed if they wish to target UK punters.  It is not clear how such a scheme could work.  If the government is thinking of regulating the providers of online TV from outside the EU in ... http://blog.harbottle.com/dm/?p=59 Author: Tony Ballard  This blog explores a possible reform of the UK TV licence fee system along the lines now being pioneered elsewhere in Europe.  It would involve assimilating the fee to some extent with the tax system, which has been resisted in the past because of concerns about editorial ... http://blog.harbottle.com/dm/?p=57 Author: Tony Ballard “For good faith users, orphan works are a frustration, a liability risk, and a major cause of gridlock in the digital marketplace”  (US Copyright Office 22 October 2012). The US Copyright Office is currently consulting on possible next steps for orphan works in the US after draft legislation ... http://blog.harbottle.com/dm/?p=56 Author: Tony Ballard The decision of the Court of Justice in Football Dataco v Sportradar, handed down earlier this month (18 October 2012), was awaited with more than usual interest by copyright lawyers working in the broadcasting and online sectors.  This was because it was the first time that the ... http://blog.harbottle.com/dm/?p=55 Author: Tony Ballard  It is a long-standing feature of EU law that, where intellectual property (IP) rights are exploited through the sale of copies of a work, the right to do so is usually exhausted when copies have been placed on the market in a Member State with the consent of ... http://blog.harbottle.com/dm/?p=54 Author: Tony Ballard The Advocate General in Football Dataco v Sportradar has proposed (in an Opinion issued 21 June 2012) a solution to one of the unresolved puzzles in copyright law presented by the non-local nature of the internet.  He rejects any analogy with broadcasting and its "emission" and "reception" theories ... http://blog.harbottle.com/dm/?p=53 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 ... http://blog.harbottle.com/dm/?p=52 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 ... http://blog.harbottle.com/dm/?p=51