Policy Observatory

This morning the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued its decision in Case C-463/12 Copydan Båndkopi, a reference for a preliminary ruling from Denmark, seeking clarification on key questions relating to the so-called ‘private copying’ exception under Article 5(2)(b) of the Information Society Directive 2001/29.

On 27 March 2014, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruled that national jurisdiction can order an injunction against an Internet Service Provider (ISP) requiring it to restrict its customers from accessing a website that is placing protected content online without the consent of the rights holder.

Four Austrian providers have continued to fight the details regarding the implementation of the decision before Austria’s supreme court (Oberster Gerichtshof, OGH) – without much success.

This week, Austrian online news platform “Futurezone” obtained a classified copy of the latest decision of the OGH. The document shows that the national supreme court decided to impose the costs of Austria’s blocking scheme on the operators – meaning that these will, in the end, be passed on to the customers.

In late 2012, Max Schrems, a privacy advocate and member of the Europe v Facebook group requested that the Irish Data Protection Commissioner investigate the alleged sharing of European Facebook users’ information with the United States National Security Agency (NSA), in the light of the Snowden revelations.

These revelations suggest that Facebook and the US government had violated the Safe Harbour arrangement, which aimed at guaranteeing the privacy of EU citizens and regulates the transfer of personal data from the European Union to the United States. When the Irish Data Protection Commissioner refused to investigate the case, Schrems appealed to the Irish High Court. The Court’s decision centred around whether the European Commission’s decision on Safe Harbour in 2000 was binding and therefore not subject to investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner.

The Schrems case, to which EDRi-member Digital Rights Ireland is attached as an amicus curiae, will have a hearing at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on 24 March.

On 25 November the European Parliament voted, by 383 votes to 271, in favour of a resolution to refer the EU-Canada agreement on Passenger Name Records (PNR) to the European Court of Justice (CJEU). The CJEU will now decide on the compliance of the agreement with EU law, in particular the Charter of Fundamental Rights. As explained in previous EDRi-gram articles, PNR data has become an attractive and invasive source for governments to obtain personal data.

Today CJEU ruled that with regard to the adaptation right, it is true that the InfoSoc Directive does not mention it. However, a situation like the one at hand, ie paper poster and canvas transfer of copyright-protected works, falls within the scope of Article 4(1) of the InfoSoc Directive. Also, exhaustion of the right of distribution under under Article 4(2) of the InfoSoc Directive only applies to the tangible support of a work.