- You acknowledge the Temple Consultants (Nottingham) Limited website as the source of
the extracted material. You must include such acknowledgement
and the Temple Consultants (Nottingham) Limited website address in
the copy of the extracted material.
- You inform the third party that these conditions apply to him
or her and that he / she must comply with them.
- You recopy the extracted material in complete and unmodified
form.
This licence to re-copy does not permit incorporation of the extracted
material or any part of it in any other work or publication, whether
in hard copy or electronic or any other form. In particular (but
without limitation) no part of the Temple Consultants (Nottingham) Limited website may be
distributed or recopied for any commercial purpose or for a fee.
Temple Consultants (Nottingham) Limited reserves the right at any time at its discretion
to withdraw or modify the licences set out above.
Links to Temple Consultants (Nottingham) Limited's website:
Temple Consultants (Nottingham) Limited reserves the right at its discretion to prohibit
any link from another Internet site or equivalent entity to materials
or information on this site. Without prejudice to that, any link
to material or information on this site must be neither misleading
nor deceptive and must fairly indicate Temple Consultants (Nottingham) Limited or www.Templesols
.com as the destination of the link.
Browsing
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has in June
2014 confirmed that browsing the internet (without downloading or
printing) does not require permission of the copyright owner because
browsing per se falls under the temporary copying exemption under
Article 5.1 of the Information Society Directive (2001/29/EC)
(implemented via Section 28A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988 (CDPA)).
The CJEU decision in the Meltwater case
(Public Relations Consultants Associations Ltd v The Newspaper
Licensing Agency Ltd and others) Case C-360/13 confirms the views
expressed by the UK Supreme Court in its provisional decision in the
case in April 2013, that there is no place for regulating casual
browsing on the internet through enforcing copyright. Business
Impact
This decision confirms that those who browse the
internet are not at risk of any unintentional liability for
copyright infringement simply by through the act of viewing
websites. For those involved in the administration of rights, it
confirms that the operation of the internet,as far as browsing is
concerned, is not dependent on wide ranging implied licences.
The CJEU decision determines the position only for browsing. It
does not therefore give internet users any comfort that printing or
downloading material, or storing it on an email, is equally
permitted.
The CJEU relied on the fact that when material is
published on the internet, the website publisher is required to
obtain the copyright owners permission. As such, the proviso in
Article 5.5 that any temporary copying exemption should not conflict
with normal exploitation of the work and not unreasonably prejudice
the legitimate interests of the rights holders was also met for
browsing. This will inevitably throw the focus of copyright owners
back on to the need to police the posting of their copyright works
on the internet in the first place.
Background
The CJEU decision arose from a reference made by the UK Supreme
Court in July 2013 following its provisional decision an appeal
brought by the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) in
the long running Meltwater case. The case was initially brought by
the Newspaper Licensing Agency against Meltwater News, a media
monitoring organisation providing internet links to its customers
which grouped together relevant news items for them to read.
The NLA (the collecting society for newspapers) argued that both
Meltwater and its customers needed a licence to deliver and receive
the service. In the course of the litigation, Meltwater accepted
that it needed a licence and therefore dropped out of the
litigation. However the NLA maintained that Meltwater's customers
also needed licences.
The PRCA (an association of public
relations professionals) then took up the fight on behalf of its
members (many of whom were Meltwater customers) to argue that no
licence was required for the mere viewing of information on a
website.
The UK Court of Appeal held that the end users did
need a licence to view the material on the internet. On appeal, the
Supreme Court disagreed, and held that no such licence was necessary
as the acts involved in viewing material on a website could fall
under the temporary coping exemption under Article 5.1 of the
Information Society Directive 2001/29/EC (Section 28A of the CDPA)
because they met the 5 criteria laid down in that article.
However, as the court recognised this was an issue "with a
transnational dimension" and implications for millions of internet
users across the EU, it made a reference to the CJEU seeking
confirmation of the interpretation of Article 5.1.
Article
5.1 of Directive 2001/29 provides an exemption to the reproduction
right for acts of reproduction that meet the relevant criteria.
The criteria are that an act of reproduction:
*should be temporary, in that it is transient or incidental,
*is an integral part and essential part of a technological process,
* its sole purpose is to enable a transmission or lawful use of a
work to be made and *it has no independent economic significance.
The UK Supreme Court considered that the last 2 of these
requirements (sole purpose and no independent economic significance)
were met on the circumstances of the Meltwater case. However, it
required guidance on whether the first 3 criteria also applied. The
formulation of the question referred was careful to prescribe the
exact circumstances under consideration, so the CJEU ruling must be
viewed in that context.
The question referred to the CJEU was
as follows:
In circumstances where:
*An end user views a web-page without downloading, printing or
otherwise setting out to make a copy of it; Copies of that
web-page are automatically made on screen and in the internet cache
on the end-user's hard disk;
*The creation of those copies is
indispensable to the technical processes involved in correct and
efficient internet browsing;
*The screen copy remains on
screen until the end-user moves away from the relevant web-page,
when it is automatically deleted by the normal operation of the
computer;
*The cached copy remains in the cache until it is
overwritten by other material as the end-user views further
web-pages, when it is automatically deleted by the operation of the
computer;
*And the copies are retained for no longer than
the ordinary processes associated with internet use referred to
above;
*Are such copies (i) temporary (ii) transient or
incidental and (iii) an integral and essential part of the
technological process within the meaning of Article 5(1) of
Directive 2001/29/EC?
The CJEU used the simplified procedure
for this case, so there was no Advocate General's decision.
(back to top)
|