Copyright cases carry on

CONFLICTS AND COURT cases about copyright continue to come thick and fast. We try to keep up...

Photographers’ rights upheld

On 1 August 2023 the Higher Regional Court of Nürnberg (Nuremberg in Germany) ruled that an online marketplace (Rakuten, resembling eBay) was liable for damages after a third-party vendor used a copyright-infringing image to advertise its product. It awarded the photographer €4450 – based on the photographer showing invoices for simular properly-licensed work.

The court then increased that by 50 per cent because the vendor had (unsurprisingly) not given the credit that German law requires. Interestingly, for those who are interested, this is an example of a courts applying "Authorsʼ Rights" laws doing much the same about a breach of moral rights as UK courts often do.

This case follows the Court of Justice of the European Union spelling out in 2021 when such platforms are liable for works posted by their users, in breach of Authors' Rights, in a case concerning YouTube and "cyberlocker". Despite Brexit, UK courts can have regard to such judgments.

Elon Musk versus the news

Twitter - currently calling itself "X" - announced a plan to stop showing summaries of news articles to which users link, and display only the featured image. Le Monde points out that this may be intended as a way to evade the requirement under EU law to pay newspapers for use of material they publish. The photos, though... As Le Monde notes, owner Elon Musk followed up by declaring "If you're a journalist who wants more freedom to write and a higher income, then publish directly on this platform!". Er... not quite sure that will work, for journalists or for journalism.

Canada the waive

Back in 2012 Canada changed its copyright law in a way that - as novelist Margaret Atwood puts it, "in effect granted universities the right to repackage the texts of books gratis, and then sell them to students, pocketing the change". Now the effects are quantified. As Publishing Perspectives reports, the Canadian collecting society Access Copyright finds that "Canadian writers, visual artists, and publishers—an indispensable part of Canada's culture—have been deprived of more than CA$200 million in unpaid royalties under tariffs certified by the Copyright Board of Canada."

FaceMask

Meta, owner of FaceBook, continues to block users in Canada from seeing news stories. This follows widespread criticism for the danger of blocking news during wildfires. The government had made regulations that would compel Facebook to pay an estimated C$62 million per year, rather than the unknown liability from the court cases that the new law would allow - but no dice.

The Dark Arts

We recommend an entertaining descrption of Hollywood accounting from popMATTERS "What if I told you that the Harry Potter franchise was actually a financial flop?"

Competition sought

12 September 2023 Not a copyright matter - but today the US Department of Justice opens a competition case against Google. In many ways it's a direct re-run of the case against Microsoft in the 1990s for forcing equipment manufactureres to install its Web browser program (or, as we'd now call it, "app"). Microsoft lost and many credit the ruling with opening up space for compeititors such as... Google. Another US competition ("anti-trust") case, over advertisement technology, is pending, as is an EU case.

© Mike Holderness