THE COPYKAT

Safe as houses?

A new children’s book “Silent Days, Silent Dreams,” is billed as a fictional biography about James Castle, a self-taught artist whose works can be found in museums, art galleries and private collections all over the world. Written for children, the book contains about 150 illustrations by award-winning writer and illustrator Allen Say - but are those illustrations going to cause problems? They might do as the James Castle Collection and Archive (which has the largest privately held collection of Castle’s works) is suing Say and his publisher for copyright infringement in Boise federal court, alleging that many of Say’s illustrations “are intended to evoke and imitate the artistic style of James Castle but some two dozen of the illustrations “are far more than a tribute” and are “similar if not virtually identical copies” of Castle’s work (see left). An injunction is being sought. 

What a difference a decade makes! China's "core network copyright industry" has seen rapid growth over the past ten years, according to a recent industry report. In 2016, the scale of the industry exceeded 500 billion yuan (about $76.5 billion U.S. dollars), maintaining a growth rate of over 30 percent a year, according to a report by the country's Network Copyright Industry Research Centre. In 2006, the volume of the industry was just 16 billion yuan, the report said. The report focuses on China's "network industry," described as network gaming and online content, including video and music. Researcher Tian Xiaojun said "With the continuous increase of copyright protection in China and the upgrade of domestic consumption, China's network copyright industry will have huge market potential and is expected to contribute more to the country's economy growth".

Mike Palmedo and Sean Flynn have released the initial results of research based on  the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property of the American University Washington College of Law's Copyright User Rights Database. This research tool maps changes to copyright limitations and exceptions and other “user rights” from 1970 through 2016 in 21 countries of different development levels around the World. Palmedo and Flynn intend to continue adding data from additional countries, but feel that the current data allows us to begin demonstrating how differences in copyright user rights are associated with certain outcomes for innovative firms and researchers. The first results are based on tests of copyright limitation openness and although all countries are trending toward more open user rights, there is a clear gap between wealthy and developing countries. The research shows that developing countries in the sample are now at the level of openness that existed in the wealthy countries 30 years ago. Few countries, and almost no developing countries, have sufficient user rights most needed to support the digital economy, including for transformative use or text and datamining. The authors say "To date, there has been very little empirical work exploring how the structure of copyright limitations and other user rights shape outcomes in industries that rely upon them. One reason for this lack of empirical research on the impact of copyright user rights has been the absence of a tool to measure the key independent variable – changes in copyright user rights over time among a broad set of countries. We hope other researchers will find the Copyright User Rights database to be a useful tool for further empirical research on copyright user rights". More here. 

Last week, Motherboard discovered that one of Google's machine learning algorithms was biased against certain racial and religious groups, as well as LGBT people. The Cloud Natural Language API analyzes paragraphs of text and then determines whether they have a positive or negative "sentiment." The algorithm rated statements like "I'm a homosexual," and "I'm a gay black woman," as negative. After the story ran, Google apologised. Now Motherboard are posing the conundrum: "Copyright Law Makes Artificial Intelligence Bias Worse - But it could be used to help fix the problem too" adding "Copyright law has historically exacerbated bias in artificially intelligent algorithms, but it also has the capability to vastly improve them. If companies knew they were protected legally, they would also be more likely to release the data their products were trained on, allowing academics and journalists to do their jobs."

Broadcaster ESPN have been forced to face a trial that alleges copyright infringement after a Mississippi federal judge denied the sports giant's motion for summary judgment. The dispute centers on two documentaries about the life of college football player Chucky Mullins, who was paralyzed during a 1989 game between University of Mississippi and Vanderbilt University while tackling Brad Gaines. Mullins died as a result of complications from his injuries in 1991. Charles Smith Jr. and his production company 38 Films us now suing ESPN and others for breach of contract, fraudulent misrepresentation and copyright infringement, among other claims. They say the 2014 ESPN documentary "It's Time: The Story of Brad Gaines and Chucky Mullins" used his footage without paying an orally agreed upon license fee or giving appropriate credit. Smith claims he understood the ESPN documentary to be about Gaines and he agreed in an oral contract to license footage from his film at a rate of $3,000 per minute used and Ginn gave Yamano their entire archive of digital files. Meanwhile, the defendants say their film is about Gaines, not Mullins, and that they didn't use any footage actually featured in Undefeated or owned by 38 Films.

And news of developments in the legal battle going between photographer Jon Tannen and the giant online media company CBS. After being sued by the photographer for infringing his photo copyrights, CBS has responded by filing its own copyright infringement lawsuit against the photographer… for sharing 59-year-old TV show still frames on social media. More here.  This is the second time the photographer has accused CBS Interactive's 247 Sports senior writer Alex Gleitman of misusing photos in his articles, initially tweeting "To Alex Gleitman. You're violating copyright law. Photo Jon Tannen" and "@Alex Gleitman You've used my photos illegally again. REMOVE THEM NOW. Never asked by permission. Your own logo.Are you stupid? @jtanne". Glietman responded by saying that he has been give the images by the player featured, and had subsequently added a credit. 

And talking of all things American Football and copyright, Eleonora Rosati has posed the question "Can a tweet containing an unlicensed photograph amount to a copyright infringement by the person who embeds such tweet on their own site?" on the IPKat. European readers will of course be familiar with the less than clear judgments in BestWater and subsequent case law, notably GS Media - and in Europe, linking can fall within the scope of the right of communication to the public within Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive, although different considerations must be undertaken depending on the case at issue, including whether the link provider is aware of the unlicensed character of the content linked to and/or pursues a profit.  This very question is now being asked in the US, where a photographer working with Getty Images has raised issues of linking and copyright under US law: Justin Goldman, has sued a number of publishers over the unauthorised embedding, by their relevant publications, of a tweet containing an unlicensed image of American football quarterback Tom Brady that he had taken. Images from http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/Sport-Quarterback-American-Football-Competition-67701/ 

Google is fighting on in the Equustek case, now in the US. Readers will remember that the Canadian Supreme Court in Google Inc v Equustek Solutions Inc, 2017 SCC 34 affirmed a decision from the Supreme Court in British Columbia and ordered Google to delist a tech company’s entire website worldwide. The web giant has now told a Californian court that that the ruling conflics with the freedom of expression rights contained within the First Amendment, and that the Canadian Supreme Court had no right meddling with the American constitution.  Google’s lawyer Margaret Caruso said “This is about whether a trial court in a foreign country can implement a law that is violative of the core values of this country … imagine if we got an order from North Korea that said we could not publish anything critical of Dear Leader. Imagine if Russia doesn’t like what people are saying about Putin. It would be very dangerous to deny relief in this instance”. Courthouse News says "Underscoring the bizarre nature of the proceedings, no attorneys for Equustek Solutions or the Canadian court system showed up, allowing Caruso to state her case to U.S. District Judge Edward Davila unopposed."

And finally, CMU Daily reports that "According to law firm RPC, the three leading claimants in the [UK's] High Court in the year up to 31 Mar 2017 were all in the business of copyright. And two of them music copyright." Leading the way with 106 cases to court was the UK's recorded music collecting society PPL, while its counterpart in music publishing, PRS, came in third with 27 cases. The Football Association is in second place having filed 39 cases, mainly seeking to protect its intellectual property rights against those illegally accessing or airing footage of football matches.

GS Media and its implications for the construction of the right of communication to the public within EU copyright architecture: a new article

In its 2016 decision in GS Media, C-160/15 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) sought to clarify under what conditions the provision of a link to a work protected by copyright made available on a third-party website (where it is freely accessible) without a licence from the relevant rightholder falls within the scope of the right of communication to the public within Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive.

In its decision the CJEU held that whether linking to unlicensed content falls within or outside the scope of Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive depends – crucially – on whether the link provider has a profit-making intention or knowledge of the unlicensed character of the work linked to.

This new article of mine - which will be published in Common Market Law Review - assesses the implications of the GS Media decision in respect of linking, and - more generally - the construction of the right of communication to the public.

The main conclusion is that GS Media imposes a re-consideration of what amounts to an act of communication to the public. Yet, the forthcoming CJEU decisions in pending references for a preliminary ruling (Filmspeler, C-527/15, and Ziggo, C-601/15) might lead to a relaxation of the concept of 'indispensable intervention', thus broadening the notion of who makes an act of communication to the public.

Ultimately the discussion undertaken in this contribution suggests that the concept of ‘communication to the public’ has been undergoing an evolution. The next frontier for Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive appears to be not just a determination of what amounts to an act of communication to the public, but also who makes an act of communication to the public. The latter in particular is the next question for the CJEU to tackle, and also poses significant – and not entirely worked out – challenges to EU policy- and law-making.

The article can be accessed and downloaded here.

Do you need permission to link? Here's my table attempting a summary of recent CJEU case law

Earlier this week the IPKat reported on the latest reference for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on hyperlinking and copyright.

Following the decision in  Svensson [here and here] and the adoption of the 'new public' criterion, the Court has further elaborated upon this very issue in BestWater, and will have the chance to say more when it decides GS Media and Filmspeler.

The answer to the question whether linking falls under the scope of the right of communication to the public as per Article 3 of the InfoSoc Directive depends on whether the content one links to is freely accessible and (possibly) also on whether its initial communication has been authorised by the relevant rightholders.

Yesterday I created a table attempting to summarise recent CJEU case law on linking. It is by no means exhaustive and, while created for my students at the University of Southampton, I thought that also some 1709 Blog readers may perhaps find it useful:

The CopyKat ..... hoping for a new public

The Drum reports that Google's move to "strangle" websites which publish copyrighted material has seen some sites suffer a 98 per cent collapse in visibility as a result of the measure - that's according to data from Searchmetrics.  The worst affected websites have been those which display links to, or directly host, copyright protected music, TV and movies. Searchmetrics has released a "top 30 loser" list, to highlight which sites have seen their rankings plummet since the changes, with Movie4k.to among those to see a 98 per cent drop.  Thepiratebay.se saw a 48 per cent fall in its Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) visibility.

And more on Google: Günther Oettinger, the man who will become the European Union’s digital economy and society commissioner in place of Nolie Kroes, is said to be considering taking the so-called “Google tax” law from his native Germany and applying it across the EU. Germany’s Leistungsschutzrecht für Presseverleger (LSR), or “ancillary copyright for press publishers” law was passed in 2013 at the behest of publishers such as Axel Springer. The LSR gives publishers the right to demand royalties from aggregators such as Google News for the use of copyrighted text in their listings. the Spanish Parliament has passed a law to levy a charge on  aggregators and search engines for using snippets or linking to infringing content - with TechDirt saying "As plenty of folks have described, the bill is clearly just a Google tax". The Irish Minister of State for European Affairs Dara Murphy said the idea veered towards protectionism.and that itwent against the principles of Europe’s single market saying "“It’s important that Europe doesn’t lurch further and closer towards protectionism just because – to date – large Silicon Valley companies have been market leaders”. In his future role, Oettinger won't be responsible for EU competition policy, but he has been a vocal critical of Google's search antitrust settlement with the EU and may have more influence over negotiations during the next phase of negotiations. Previously, he's suggested that Google could be forced to display search results objectively and neutrally, the FT noted. 

It's all about linking right now! Now with both Svensson and Bestwater out, in their  recently published opinion, ALAI believes that the CJEU got it very wrong in Svensson, in particular, the adoption of the "new public" criterion - and on that very matter, Eleonora has just posed a very interesting piece on the IPKAt here .  Some early thoughts here.

And following on from the above, BLACA are hosting what looks like a very very interesting seminar simply titled "linking" with a distinguished trio of speakers:  Prof Dr Silke von Lewinski (Max Planck Institure) will be speaking about the CJEU's concept of the  'new public', Prof Dr Jan Rosen (Stockholm University) will be speaking about the ALAI opinion and Svensson, and Prof Lionel Bently  (University of Cambridge) will be speaking on the the basis of the opinion of the European Copyright Society. It's on Thursday 13th November at 18.30 at the offices of Berwin Leighton at London EC3R 6HE - and we are promised details on the BLACA website soon http://www.blaca.org/

And finally, every three years, the U.S. Copyright Office accepts petitions on what activities should get an "exemption" under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The sixth tri-annual rulemaking is now upon us, and the deadline is this Monday, November 3. Public Knowledge say they will be submitting petitions asking to legalize consumer ripping of DVDs, as well as allowing circumvention of DRM-based input to 3D printers. 

Prince Sues Twenty Two Fans For Linking to Infringing Content

Pop idol Prince caused controversy last week when he initiated a copyright action against twenty two fans. The defendants in question had created fan websites dedicated to the musician through the use of platforms like Facebook and Blogger. Prince alleges that the defendants used these websites to post links to torrent sites where recordings of his concerts could be downloaded for free.  He is seeking $1 million in damages from each defendant, only two of which are identified by name (the others remaining as John Doe defendants).

According to Prince, the defendants' websites constitute "an interconnected network of bootleg distribution which is able to broadly disseminate unauthorized copies of Prince’s musical compositions and live performances" and accordingly their actions amounted to "massive infringement and bootlegging" of copyrighted material.

Fans have expressed their shock at Prince’s decision to sue his own fan-base. At the fan-based web forum Prince.org, fans left messages such as: "Yes bootlegging is wrong, but … who is next? Dude will even go after regular ass fans … really sad," and "Prince will be remembered for making some of the most beautiful music ever created and for hating his fans." Many will no doubt be aware that Prince has track record of copyright litigation. This included an unsuccessful legal action brought against the Pirate Bay in 2007.  

German "ancillary copyright" bill: news aggregators may use short excerpts

Readers may remember that last summer this blog reported that German legislators were considering a proposed "ancillary copyright" which would require news aggregators to pay royalties on excerpts of news stories that they link to.
Bloomberg now reports that the Bundestag has agreed a bill which provides that:

- News aggregators may display "single words or very small text excerpts" from to publishers' websites free of charge, however it does not define what constitutes a small excerpt.

- Publishers will be given one year during which they have the sole rights to commercially use their journalistic content. Presumably the above exception applies during this year - perhaps a German-speaking reader could clarify this?

- Mere linking cannot be prohibited.

The bill, which was passed with 293 votes in favor, 243 against and three abstentions, still needs to be ratified by the upper house of the German parliament, the Bundesrat. If it is passed it will be a much weaker version of what German publishers had originally lobbied for, however the European Publishers' Council ignored that in its statement of 1 March, saying that it:

"welcomes today’s decision by the German Bundestag to approve an ancillary copyright for news publishers in law that means that search engines and other aggregators who commercialise publishers' content will no longer be able to do so without permission. The "Leistungsschutzrecht," as it is known in German, will pave the way for commercial negotiations between the parties on the price for the commercial use of publishers' content."

Google has said:

"As a result of today's vote, ancillary copyright in its most damaging form has been stopped. However, the best outcome for Germany would be no new legislation because it threatens innovation, particularly for start-ups. It’s also not necessary because publishers and Internet companies can innovate together, just as Google has done in many other countries."

Predictably neither side appears thrilled with the bill, and this is undoubtedly not the last we will hear of it.

European Copyright Society says that linking is not communication

Daydreaming Priscilla spent Valentine's
day thinking about Svensson

A few months ago, The 1709 Blog and the IPKat reported news of another case referred to the ever-active Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), seeking clarification as to the scope of the right of communication to the public within Article 3 of Directive 2001/29/EC (the InfoSoc Directive).

This is Case C-466/12 Svensson and Others [according to well-informed sources, despite hints to the contrary, for once this is not a copyright case about football], a reference from the Svea hovrätt (the Svea court of appeal is one of the six appellate courts in the Swedish legal system) asking the CJEU whether a clickable link can be considered tantamount to an act of communication to the public within Article 3(1) of this directive.

To be precise, the Swedish court referred the following questions to the CJEU:

1.   If anyone other than the holder of copyright in a certain work supplies a clickable link to the work on his website, does that constitute communication to the public within the meaning of Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC ...? 

2.   Is the assessment under question 1 affected if the work to which the link refers is on a website on the Internet which can be accessed by anyone without restrictions or if access is restricted in some way?

3.   When making the assessment under question 1, should any distinction be drawn between a case where the work, after the user has clicked on the link, is shown on another website and one where the work, after the user has clicked on the link, is shown in such a way as to give the impression that it is appearing on the same website?

4.   Is it possible for a Member State to give wider protection to authors' exclusive right by enabling 'communication to the public' to cover a greater range of acts than provided for in Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC ...?

The case is a tough one and its outcome promises to have a significant impact on EU Member States, as similar issues are currently under consideration also at the national level.

Professor Lionel Bently

The 1709 Blog's friend and well-known academic Professor Lionel Bently of the University of Cambridge has brought to this blogger’s attention that the European Copyright Society has just issued an Opinion which sheds some light on this reference from Sweden. 

As readers might be aware of, the European Copyright Society (ECS) was founded at the beginning of 2012 with the aim of creating a platform for critical and independent scholarly thinking on European copyright law. ECS members are renowned scholars and academics from various countries of Europe, seeking to promote their views of the overall public interest. The Society is not funded by, nor has been instructed by, any particular stakeholders.

The Opinion, which has been signed by 17 leading European copyright scholars, is premised on the consideration that:

"Although hyperlinking takes many forms and has multiple functions, there can be no doubt that it is the single most important feature that differentiates the Internet from other forms of cultural production and dissemination. Hyperlinking is intimately bound to the conception of the Internet as a network, and hyperlinks constitute paths leading users from one location to another ... 
The legal regulation of hyperlinking thus carries with it enormous capacity to interfere with the operation of the Internet, and therefore with access to information, freedom of expression, freedom to conduct business, as well – of course – with business ventures that depend on these types of linkages. Europe has developed a significant sector of SMEs, many of whose web operations depend on the use and provision of links. The Court must not under-estimate the importance of its ruling in this case."

As summarised by Lionel,

There are other instances when linking
does not necessarily involve an act of communication
to the public (and does not require
an internet connection either)

"The Opinion argues that hyperlinking in general should be regarded as an activity that is not covered by the right to communicate the work to the public embodied in Article 3 of Directive 2001/29. We offer three reasons for this conclusion:

(a) Hyperlinks are not communications because establishing a hyperlink does not amount to "transmission" of a work, and such transmission is a pre-requisite for "communication";

(b) Even if transmission is not necessary for there to be a "communication", the rights of the copyright owner apply only to communication to the public "of the work", and whatever a hyperlink provides, it is not "of a work";

(c) Even if a hyperlink is regarded as a communication of a work, it is not to a "new public."

However, the Opinion leaves open the possibility that in some circumstances creating hyperlinks might give rise to liability, or be part of a series of acts that gives rise to liability. In fact, as is clear from national case-law, different forms of hyperlinking may give rise to accessory liability (particularly in respect of knowingly facilitating the making of illegal copies); liability under unfair competition law; infringement of moral rights; and possibly for circumvention of technological measures. Only the last of these has been the subject of harmonization at a European level, and thus falls within the competence of the Court of Justice."

As highlighted by Jeremy on the IPKat, the outcome of this case is keenly awaited by all those good souls who are involved in blogging-related activities. As bloggers, we hyperlink all the time and we indeed consider hyperlinks as tools which allow us to either provide appropriate references which support or elaborate on our statements or direct readers towards items which they can find interesting. 

The full text of the ECS Opinion is available here.