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Category: Safe Harbor

Viacom-Google battle

YouTube, owned by Google, operates a website onto which users may upload video files free of charge. Uploaded files are copied and formatted by YouTube’s computer systems, and then made available for viewing on YouTube. Plaintiffs claimed that “Defendants had ‘actual knowledge’ and were ‘aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity was apparent,’ but failed to do anything about it.”

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Some of ideal business schemes can damage the interests of copyright holders

Robertson founded MP3tunes in February 2005 and launched the website MP3tunes.com to sell independent artists’ songs in the mp3 file format. In the fall of 2005, MP3tunes added a storage service allowing users to store music files in personal online storage “lockers.” Songs uploaded to a user’s locker could be played and downloaded through any internet-enabled device. There are free lockers with limited storage space and premium lockers with expanded storage for a subscription fee.

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Collective management organisation v Social network

SABAM is a management company which represents authors, composers and publishers of musical works. On that basis, it is responsible for, inter alia, authorising the use by third parties of copyright-protected works of those authors, composers and publishers. Netlog runs an online social networking platform where every person who registers acquires a personal space known as a ‘profile’ which the user can complete himself and which becomes available globally.

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Collective management organisation v Internet Service Provider

SABAM is a management company which represents authors, composers and editors of musical works in authorising the use of their copyright-protected works by third parties. Scarlet is an internet service provider (“ISP”) which provides its customers with access to the internet without offering other services such as downloading or file sharing.

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Proposals to Directive on copyright in DSM – communication to the public

Over the last years, the functioning of the online content marketplace has gained in complexity. Online services providing access to copyright protected content uploaded by their users have flourished and have become main sources of access to content online. Legal uncertainty exists as to whether such online services engage in copyright relevant acts and need to obtain authorisations from rightholders for the content uploaded by their users who do not hold the relevant rights in the uploaded content.

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Whether “volitional conduct” is required to establish a claim for direct copyright infringement

T&S hosts a website that includes a public forum called “HairTalk.” Users of the forum may post content, share comments, ask questions, and engage in online interactions with other users on a range of topics including hair, beauty, and celebrities. Use of HairTalk is governed by terms of service providing that “any photo containing… celebrities… or any copyrighted image (unless you own the copyright) is not permitted.” Every time someone logs on to HairTalk, the user must agree to these terms.

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Reforming of copyright in EU and one of the questions concerned: user-generated content

User Generated Content (UGC) is understood as referring to cases where a pre-existing work is taken by a user as a starting point for his/her own expression, modified or transformed in one way or another, and then made available online. It may also include the merging of two pre-existing works (“mash-ups”). The threshold may be lower than “a certain amount of creative effort”. It excludes the case of “mere upload”, where a user merely distributes on the internet (by uploading and sharing it) pre-existing works without having intervened in any way on the work. It also excludes “creation from scratch”, i.e. the case where a user creates a new work “from scratch”, without relying on a pre-existing work.

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