Posted in Liability of ISPs, personality rights, search engines

Liability for Algorithm Design & Big Data (Google Auto-complete)
The sixth senate of the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) in March decided a case against Google (VI ZR 269/12) involving a question of its liability for Autocomplete Tool. The case was widely reported around various websites (IPKat, DW, BBC, etc.) as ‘Germany tells Google to tidy up auto-complete’. Few weeks ago, the decision full-text
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Posted in Art. 8(1) EnforD, Art. 8(3) InfoSoc, copyright, in rem injunctions, innocent parties injunctions, Pharma Norwich order, privacy

Are Banks Required to Disclose the Indentity of their Customers to Copyright Holders?
FutureOfCopyright reports very interesting recent Dutch copyright case – BREIN v. ING (Case No. C/13/539327). Local anti-piracy group BREIN sued well known bank and insurance company, ING, for disclosure of identity and bank transfers of one of it’s customers, who is a domain name holder of a website (largest Usenet community in the Netherlands with
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Posted in actio negatoria, Art. 11 EnforD, Art. 8(3) InfoSoc, CJEU, in rem injunctions, injunctions

Injunctions Outside of Tort Law?
Thanks to crowd funding call orchestrated by Jeremy and several extraordinary people from around the world (some of them anonymous), to whom I am greatly indebted for their spontaneous support, I will be able to share one of my recent work-in-progress papers with audience at INTA next week in Dallas. The working version of the
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Posted in CJEU, data protection, EU, personal data, personality rights

Does Use of CCTVs to Protect Your Home From Offenders Fall Outside of EU Data Protection Laws?
This is how we could rephrase a new preliminary reference by the Czech Administrative Supreme Court.  Journalist and former publisher of local newspapers Mr. Ryneš had persisting problems with unknown offenders who attacked him six times and several times damaged his house. Czech Police never found out who they were. Mr. Ryneš thus decided to
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Posted in Art. 11 EnforD, Art. 8(3) InfoSoc, human rights, right to a fair trail, UK, website blocking

What’s Wrong With UK Website Blocking Injunctions?
British courts issued already three website blocking injunctions against five copyright-infringing websites (Newzbin II. + 1 , Dramatico Entertainment + 1 , EMI Records ). In this blog post I don’t want to question the effectiveness of the remedy for copyright cases as I did before (see also J Arnold’s opinion in EMI
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Posted in CJEU, communication to the public, copyright, EU, webstreaming

Retransmission by Internet Stream, CJEU Decides ITV Broadcasting
Television broadcasters may prohibit the retransmission of their programmes by another company via the internet, decided CJEU today in a British reference ITV Broadcasting C-607/11. Defendant in the British proceedings, TVCatchup Ltd (‘TVC’), offers an internet television broadcasting service. This service permits its users to receive, via the internet, ‘live’ streams of free-to-air
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Posted in Art. 8(3) InfoSoc, CJEU, copyright, three-step test

IViR Has Some Numbers for CJEU
One of Huťko’s favorite European Internet law Institutes, Dutch IViR, recently published an interesting survey-based study on downloading and streaming from illegal sources in the Netherlands (including the effects of website blocking on consumers behaviour). Some of the findings might be really interesting for CJEU, who will be deciding two related cases this year. Namely:
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Posted in collective societies, copyright, CR, free movement

Czech Court Asks CJEU: Is Teritorrial Monopoly of Collecting Societies Compatible with Free Movement of Services?
After BSA C-393/09, another copyright preliminary reference from Czech courts is making it’s way to the Court of Justice of EU. This time, on exemptions to the ‘communication to the public’ right, conformity of the territorial monopoly of collecting societies with Union law and possibility of the Horizontal Direct Effect of InfoSoc directive. The new
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