Most of the existing European Union and international policies are considered in some depth, and the authors also discuss a variety of national laws and initiatives, technical measures, and the soft law and hard law models that have been proposed. In the years to come, as more and more lawyers are confronted with issues involving copyright enforcement on the Internet, this book's value as a springboard to the informed future development of this area of legal theory and practice will become more evident. For this reason, as well as for its richly detailed treatment of trends and current reality in the field, it is sure to be read and put to good use by business people, international lawyers, government officials, and interested academics in all parts of the world.

EU Copyright Law Subsistence, Exploitation and Protection of Rights Morten Rosenmeier, Kacper Szkalej and Sanna Wolk Against a background in which technology continues to change the ways we create, use, distribute and consume cultural content – and where there has been a noticeable increase in the body of case law of Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) relating to copyright – copyright protection has become an essential component of the knowledge-based economy and the information society. This book, structured around the various rights and issues rather than the legislative instruments, greatly facilitates an understanding of the complex legal area of European Union (EU) copyright law and provides for a more conscious application of these rules. Among the issues and topics covered are the following: the CJEU’s interpretation of EU copyright law and application of fundamental rights; authorship and ownership of copyright; protection of computer programs and databases; scope of exclusive rights, such as communication to the public and distribution, including rental and lending; application of limitations and exceptions; cross-border access to online content services; digital exhaustion of copyright; and enforcement of copyright and cross-border issues; With its practical approach to the substance of the various legal rules and principles both at EU level and in the various EU Member States, the book clearly describes in detail how copyright law functions throughout the EU. Professionals, business entities and academics who must be familiar with this dynamic legal area, especially in the digital environment, will benefit greatly from the book’s clear consideration of legal questions that arise in connection with copyright issues.

All forms of online communications and interactions between people and companies on the Internet are facilitated by intermediaries – service providers whose decisions and policies have a shaping effect on the Internet, its users and the information shared on it. Today, because such intermediaries employ technologies that go well beyond the mere transmission and storage of information into new realms potentially disrupting existing business models, a rethinking of existing relevant law is called for. The legal analysis and recommendations in this book put the topic of intermediary liability in the perspective of copyright law and offer a vision on how to regulate that liability. In the context of in-depth and up-to-date analyses on EU, US, German and Dutch law, the author discusses such issues and topics as the following: the liability rules in the new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market; liability for the intermediary’s own copyright infringements (primary liability); the intermediary’s responsibility to stop or prevent the infringements of others (secondary liability); the role that fundamental rights play in copyright law and intermediary liability; the rights and interests of copyright owners, intermediaries and users, and how they are protected; notice-and-takedown by service providers; website blocking by Internet access providers; the publisher’s rights and the use of online articles by platforms; legal status of hyperlinks under copyright law; and search engine use of copyrighted materials. A focus on the strengths and weaknesses of existing EU copyright law concerning Internet intermediaries in terms of how future-proof that law is, includes detailed attention to legislation, regulation and case law. With its deeply informed guidance with respect to the methods of regulation in a domain that is heavily influenced by technological developments, this book will be welcomed by policymakers, legislators, academics, judges and practitioners working in the area of copyright law as applied to the Internet. The detailed attention to the extent to which an intermediary can be held liable for copyright infringements in both the EU and the US will prove highly beneficial for in-house counsellors and advisors working for rights holder organizations and intermediary service providers.

This book presents a thorough exploration of the legal framework of EU digital copyright law from the perspective of the end-user. It provides a detailed examination of the implications that the spectacular rise of this new actor creates for the interplay between the EU copyright system and human rights law, competition law and other important policies contained in the EC Treaty. This comprehensive, book is crucial reading for lawyers, policymakers and academics.

This report examines consumption of copyright-infringing content in the 28 EU Member States, for TV programmes, music and film, using a variety of desktop and mobile access methods, including streaming, downloading, torrents and ripping software. The report consists of two parts, a descriptive analysis of the trends in consumption of infringing content, and an econometric analysis of the factors that influence differences in piracy rates among the EU Member States. The analysis is based on a rich set of data on access to pirated music, film and TV programmes in all 28 Member States, for the period January 2017 to September 2018. The data covers both fixed and mobile devices, as well as the main access methods: streaming, downloads, torrents and stream ripping.

This book investigates recent policy initiatives dealing with the online enforcement of copyright in the European Union, providing unique insights into the current stalemate in the field. It is a timely contribution to the next steps of policy-making on copyright enforcement and Internet governance. The author brings to light tensions in how we encourage knowledge and cultural creation, and importantly how we regulate the Internet. In this study, online copyright enforcement is situated within the wider debate on Internet governance. Intermediary liability is a focal point. It provides an explanation of recent online copyright enforcement policy initiatives is based on an in-depth investigation of the ideas, interests, institutions and discourses involved in three EU level and two member state level initiatives. Seventy-two expert interviews complement the policy analysis conducted.

This report is based on an analysis of the 30 most frequently pirated creative works in each of the EU Member States, including 316 films, 500 music artists and 309 TV series. The data on consumption of pirated content was purchased from MUSO, a leading commercial provider of such data, while the data on legal consumption of film (as measured by the number of admissions to theatres) was obtained from the European Audiovisual Observatory's Lumiere database. For music and TV series, such data is not available at the title and artist level. For this reason, the analysis in this report is more extensive for film than for music and television. Piracy mainly affects creative works recently produced and released. In the case of film, two piracy patterns appear. Firstly, piracy follows commercial success. Therefore, it is suffered mainly by films that were commercially successful in cinemas and enjoyed wide international distribution. For this reason, piracy is suffered above all by US productions (84 % of the MUSO list) but also British, French and Italian ones. Piracy of films from these four countries represents 96 % of film piracy in the EU.

More than a source of income and a means of protection for creators, rightholders, and the creative and entertainment industries, copyright is also a vehicle for technological advances and economic development. In the European Union, industries with intensive emphasis on intellectual property rights (mainly copyright) generate more than a quarter of employment and more than a third of economic activity. Yet copyright continues to be plagued by problematic attempts to balance the interests of rightholders, the public, consumers, intermediaries, collecting societies, different national legal traditions, and other forces, European and global. This book draws a comprehensive picture of current, pending, and proposed copyright developments – legislation, ‘communications,’ white papers, and court decisions – at the levels of the European Union and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Twenty-two well-known and prestigious experts on intellectual property law from seventeen jurisdictions worldwide contribute essays on particular trends in copyright, including discussions of the following and more: - making content available in an EU digital single market; - collective management and multi-territorial licensing; - exceptions for libraries and archives, education and research; - traditional knowledge and cultural expressions; - unjustified geoblocking; - illegal content on the Internet; - text and data mining; - copyright enforcement online; and - role of the European Court of Justice. Policy recommendations are also set forth, as well as a detailed conceptual framework for a potential EU Copyright Code. As a detailed and thoughtful overview of current trends in copyright internationally, this book has no peers. It is sure to be welcomed by practitioners, policymakers, academics, researchers, and business leaders for whom intellectual property rights, and especially copyright, are of the first importance.

This significantly revised and updated second edition addresses the rapid development of EU copyright law in relation to the advancement of new technologies, the need for a borderless digital market and the considerable number of EU legal instruments enacted as a result. Taking a comparative approach, the Commentary provides comprehensive coverage and in-depth commentary on each of the EU legal instruments and policies, both from an EU and an international perspective. Alongside full legislative analysis and article-by-article commentary, the Commentary illustrates the underlying basic principles of free movement and non-discrimination and provides insights into the influence of copyright on other areas of EU policy, including telecoms and bilateral trade agreements.

The Routledge Handbook of EU Copyright Law provides a definitive survey of copyright harmonization in the European Union, capturing the essential and relevant issues of this relatively recent phenomenon. Over the past few years, two themes have emerged: on the one hand, copyright policy and legislative initiatives have intensified; on the other hand, the large number of references to the Court of Justice of the European Union has substantially shaped the EU copyright framework and, with it, the copyright framework of individual EU Member States. This handbook is a detailed reference source of original contributions which analyze and critically evaluate the state of EU copyright law with a view to detecting the key trends and patterns in the evolution of EU copyright, weighing the benefits and disadvantages of such evolution. It covers a broad range of topics through clusters focused on: the history and approaches to EU copyright harmonization; harmonization in the areas of exclusive rights, exceptions and limitations, and enforcement; copyright policy and legacy of harmonization. With contributions from a selection of highly regarded and leading scholars in this field, the Routledge Handbook on European Copyright Law is an essential resource for students and scholars who are interested in the field of copyright law.