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Web Browsing Isn't Copyright Infringement, Rules EU Court of Justice

Posted by timothy on from the this-is-a-court-of-law dept.

mpicpp (3454017) writes with this news from Ars Technica: 'Europeans may browse the Internet without fear of infringing copyrights, as the EU Court of Justice ruled Thursday in a decision that ends a four-year legal battle threatening the open Internet. It was the European top court's second wide-ranging cyber ruling in less than a month. The court ruled May 13 that Europeans had a so-called "right to be forgotten" requiring Google to delete "inadequate" and "irrelevant" data upon requests from the public. That decision is spurring thousands of removal requests. In this week's case, the court slapped down the Newspaper Licensing Agency's (NLA) claim that the technological underpinnings of Web surfing amounted to infringement. The court ruled that "on-screen copies and the cached copies made by an end-user in the course of viewing a website satisfy the conditions" of infringement exemptions spelled out in the EU Copyright Directive. The NLA's opponent in the case was the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA). The PR group hailed the decision.'

28 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why would the newspapers want it to be illegal to view their websites?

    1. Re:WTF? by internerdj · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because if they can make it illegal to view their content on a computer they can go back to the more controllable form of print media.

    2. Re:WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They didn't. Or they didn't seem to think that's what they were doing.

      They wanted to be able to get higher revenues from certain client companies who pay licensing fees for the right to RE-produce the newspapers' contents on their own web sites, and/or who distribute it to secondary companies.

      As I glean it, those fees are based on the number of end-user copies that are being made. The newspapers wanted to count ... uh, hang on now, this is getting fuzzy. I guess they wanted to count the copies that existed in end-user browser caches as ADDITIONAL copies, so that the bottom line revenues would be higher. Or something. "Its main argument was the cost that the licensing public relations companies pay for the reproductions should factor in to what is temporarily copied on a reader's computer."

      Like I charge you per-copy for reading my paper, and I count the ink that rubs off on your hand as a copy. Also the reflection in your glasses.

      I don't get that it would prevent anyone from reading stuff from their website, because publishing the material would constitute a license to use it, browser cache included. It's strictly a grab for more revenues for this particular redistribution channel.

      Because, you know, revenue.

    3. Re:WTF? by jc42 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Like I charge you per-copy for reading my paper, and I count the ink that rubs off on your hand as a copy. Also the reflection in your glasses.

      And there's also the copy from short-term to long-term memory that occurs in your brain when you read an article and actually remember it the next day. Soon they'll be quizzing readers about last-weeks news, and every correct answer means they can charge for the extra copy in your long-term memory.

      Lest you think this is a joke, remember that companies did try to claim that computer backups are legally "copies" that must be paid for to be legal.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    4. Re:WTF? by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because they are fundamentally stupid. They think that everybody needs to view their sites (i.e. that they have a needed, irreplaceable good), so controlling all access gives them maximum impact. What actually happens is that they are a luxury good and people just stop caring about their product when it gets hard to access. Kind of like the music industry classifying each illegal download as a "lost sale", when the reality is that people just would do without if copying it was difficult. Many younger artists understand that now and are putting samples or their full works on the web, because the only way to make somebody pay for content is if they are willing to pay for content. And for the customers willing to pay, putting everything up for free and asking for donations works just as well and without all the stupidity that DRM and copyright restrictions for non-commercial copying brings with it.

      The newspapers really are are primarily responsible for their own decline.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    5. Re:WTF? by pepty · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It would give them twin business models: subscriptions for the people willing to pay, infringement shakedowns for the people who aren't willing to pay.

      What I'd like to know is if:

      The court ruled that "on-screen copies and the cached copies made by an end-user in the course of viewing a website satisfy the conditions" of infringement exemptions spelled out in the EU Copyright Directive.

      applies to streaming video websites as well.

    6. Re:WTF? by jhol13 · · Score: 2

      No, that is not what they are after. They want you to pay for the information.
      So that you would not get it freely from "illegal" or "gray" (hard to say whether illegal or not) sites.
      So that if you do, they can send you the "600€ or face prosecution" -letter.

    7. Re:WTF? by pr100 · · Score: 2

      Huh? If the newspapers don't want people to view their content via the web then they should stop publishing it on the web.

  2. Re:how does one even contact google to be forgotte by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    GO here:

    https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=websearch

  3. Copyright ending by gurps_npc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What we really need is some way to prevent congress from constantly extending copyright, slowly stealing from the public public works.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    1. Re:Copyright ending by lawnboy5-O · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ...or of course, just get rid of congress once and for all and elect working class people who know better from the get-go. It comes down to getting the money out of politics. It's time. Cheers!

    2. Re:Copyright ending by Trepidity · · Score: 3, Informative

      The way Congress currently is, electing middle-class people would be a significant downgrade in their wealth. The median net worth of a Senator is $2.6 million.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    3. Re:Copyright ending by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 2

      SO, you suspect that poorer people would have less incentive to accept "campaign contributions" in exchange for a favourable vote?

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    4. Re:Copyright ending by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It will certainly have a better effect on the economy, since they are poor it is because of 1 of 2 reasons:

      They are no good at making money (No net change if they get bribed)
      They are really good at spending money (All bribe money flows right back into the economy!).

      I think it is a good thing for the economy to have more poor congresscritters!

      Remember; Rich people are usually a varying combination of:

      1) Don't spend money on shit you don't need (until you have so much that you can afford to spend a tiny tiny amount on lambos and hookers)
      2) Really Really good at convincing other people to give them money (be it for being a superstar CEO, got a lot of power thus get a lot of bribes, setting up a legal scenario that makes people or the government pay them more money than they would if they didn't setup some legal scheme)
      3) Were born with so much money they have to be *really* dumb to end up with none.

      Very very few rich people are:
      4) So talented that they actually earned it by being super smart, and careful with their plans until someone bought so much of their superior product/service that they ended up rich.

    5. Re:Copyright ending by srichard25 · · Score: 2

      A few of those people were middle class when they went into Congress. Somehow they miraculously became millionaires while in Congress. Funny how that works.

  4. Make them pay! by AndyKron · · Score: 2

    The Newspaper Licensing Agency should have to pay the government for four years of bullshit.

  5. Their arguments are illogical by mpicpp · · Score: 4, Interesting

    To argue that cache files in a web browser is infringement is as silly as claiming that your eye transmitting an image to your brain is infringement...

    1. Re:Their arguments are illogical by dinfinity · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're right. Clearly we need Brain-HDCP! It would solve everything!
      Kind regards, the MPAA.

      P.S. HNCP would be more apt, I guess.

    2. Re:Their arguments are illogical by toejam13 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The stupid thing is that they can block caching of files using HTTP headers...

      Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
      Pragma: no-cache
      Expires: 0

    3. Re:Their arguments are illogical by vux984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Copyright law is mostly there. It specifically allows for incidental copies made to use software for example. So you don't need a separate license to move it from the CD to the hard drive, from the hard drive to the drive controller cash, to RAM, to L1 cache, to L2 cache, and to video memory, along with the copy that gets shunted to the backup tape system at night....

      That all media should be extended the same incidental copyright exclusion should be a nobrainer, but yeah, until its settled we get idiots thinking the image on screen is infringement, the image in your browser cache is infringement, and by golly, and if ~thats~ not infringement, then its surely infringment when you do a complete PC back up that night and your browser cache ends up duplicated onto your external USB drive along with everything else. You dirty criminal.

      Good on the EU court for setting a precedent.

  6. Re:I don't get it by jc42 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Someone wanted to deliver content via webserver and then sue people who received this delivery as violating copyright?

    Amazing.

    They seem to be saying that, in addition to displaying the content on your screen, your browser also writes a copy into its cache, and that's two copies.

    I wonder what they'd say of, say, a RAID1 file system, which makes two copies of the cached page, on two different disks. Would that mean two violations of the copyright? And if, after sending it from the screen to your eyes, the information in your brain is a third violation?

    --
    Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
  7. Re:how does one even contact google to be forgotte by 1000101 · · Score: 2

    Or use http://duckduckgo.com/ and stop using Google?

  8. Re:Free MOVIÃ$ by dougisfunny · · Score: 2

    So you add a browser extension where you click on a torrent link it starts loading the movie in the browser. Brilliant!

    --
    This is not the funny you're looking for.
  9. Re:Free MOVIÃ$ by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 2

    The thought of a bit-torrent client written in Javascript makes my stomach hurt.

  10. In Today's Improbable News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The EU Court of Justice makes a judgement that is rational, implementable, and conforms to what 99.999% of citizens want, while only PO'ing the remaining 0.001% who, if they cannot accept this judgement, can opt out of publishing on the Internet.

    It's a miracle!!

  11. This argument led to software licenses by ZorinLynx · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I recall that back in the day, when people started charging for computer software, it was treated as a book. If you paid for the book, it was yours and you could use it for whatever you want.

    Then someone came along and decided that copying the software from disk into memory was considered copyright infringement, and thus you needed a license to do so. Hence the software license and all its associated pain in the ass restrictions was born.

    So basically, these idiots are trying to use the same concept to add additional legal hurdles to simply browsing the web. At least this time, unlike back in the day with software, sanity ended up being victorious.

    1. Re:This argument led to software licenses by GTRacer · · Score: 2

      Ah, the amazingly useful Borland "Like a Book" license. As I recall, you could install to your heart's content (possibly limited to your own household or business), subject to the agreement only one person can "borrow the book" at any given time. They didn't manage this with technological measures, just the good ol' fashioned honor system.

      --
      Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
  12. Re:Just Stop It EU! Stop it! by jopsen · · Score: 2

    USA is land of the free,

    Yes, free to be poor... :)

    home of the brave,

    Indeed, cheap guns and poverty is a cocktail only for the brave :)