European Court Says Leagues Don't Hold Copyright On Sporting Events

from the whoa dept

Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about a case in which a woman from the UK who owned a pub was in a legal fight with the UK Premier League (football or soccer, depending on what you think the sport should be called) concerning the use of a foreign satellite decoder. Basically, the pub owner, Karen Murphy, felt that the rates charged by Sky Sports & ESPN were crazy high... and found that she could buy a much, much cheaper decoder from a Greek source... and that would work and allowed her to show the games. The league went after her, but she argued that blocking her ability to buy and use a foreign decoder card was an illegal restraint on trade: "If I wanted to go and buy a car, I could go to any garage I like. Me, as a publican, if I want to show football, I can only go to the Sky garage, and have to pay ten times the price of anybody else [in Europe]. I don't believe that's fair." The European High Court of Justice has now sided with her... somewhat. They've agreed that it's a restraint of trade to block her from buying or using the Greek decoder card... but there could be some issues with showing the games at her pub without a separate license.

What struck me as much, much, much more interesting, however is this part of the ECJ's ruling:

The judges said the Premier League could not claim copyright over Premier League matches as they could not considered to be an author's own "intellectual creation" and, therefore, to be "works" for the purposes of EU copyright law.

I've always wondered about this. As you may know, in the US, various sports leagues always claim copyright not just over the games, but even "any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game" at times. That's clearly an overreach of copyright law. But, in this case, the court seems to be saying that the league can't own anything about the games at all. Instead, it says that it can only hold copyright on additional artwork it creates above and beyond the events:

However, the ECJ did add that while live matches were not protected by copyright, any surrounding media, such as any opening video sequence, the Premier League anthem, pre-recorded films showing highlights of recent Premier League matches and various graphics, were "works" protected by copyright.

The BBC piece linked above wonders if this would allow others to rebroadcast the games minus any such add-ons, though you have to imagine that the Premier League will (if it isn't already) include something on screen at all times.

But what I get out of this ruling is that, in theory, it would now be perfectly legal to go to a match, and broadcast it yourself via your own camera. Or, hell, send a few friends with smartphones and streaming video -- and have someone running a board picking which camera to show at any one time, and you could create an entirely crowdsourced broadcast. Of course, stadium officials might throw you out, but it sounds like from this ruling, such a production would not violate copyright law, since there's no copyright in the sporting event itself.

Filed Under: copyright, eu, sporting events

EU, Mexico & Switzerland Will Not Sign ACTA This Weekend, Despite The 'Signing Ceremony'

from the a-brief-reprieve dept

With Japan announcing a signing ceremony this Saturday for those who negotiated ACTA, it seemed reasonable to think that most of those listed as planning to attend would be signing. Of course, we wondered about the US, the EU and Mexico -- as there have been legal questions and challenges raised to ACTA in all three cases, with Mexico's Congress specifically telling the President it will not ratify the treaty. The EU had also been investigating whether or not ACTA was in line with EU law, and that process has not been completed, so we thought it was premature for the EU to sign onto ACTA.

Thankfully, the EU Commission agrees... and has now said that it will not be signing ACTA this weekend, and also saying that Mexico and Switzerland have also said they won't sign... yet:

"The EU has not yet completed its internal procedures authorising the signature, therefore it will not be signing ACTA at this event," the Commission spokesperson said in a statement. "Neither will Mexico and Switzerland, since they did not conclude their domestic proceedings."

"For the EU, the domestic process for signature is that the Council [of Ministers] adopts a decision authorising a EU representative to sign ACTA. Since this required the translation of the treaty in all the EU languages, such decision has not yet been adopted. It may still require a couple of months for the EU to be able to sign ACTA. After the signature, the European Parliament will have to vote its consent of ACTA,"

Of course, this is not a complete rejection of ACTA, but it is a reprieve. It also sounds as though all the other countries listed will be signing, including the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Korea, Morocco and Singapore. That's a pretty bold move by the Obama administration, considering the evidence that signing ACTA in this manner without Senate approval is unconstitutional. I guess actually expecting the president to follow the Constitution is only important when you're not in office. Once you get there, all bets are off...

Filed Under: acta, copyright, eu, mexico, switzerland, us

US, EU, Canada, Japan, Australia & Others To Sign ACTA This Weekend, Despite Legal Concerns

from the failure dept

Despite serious Constitutional concerns in the US, and significant legal questions in the EU, it appears that the US and the EU, along with most of the other participants in the ACTA negotiations are planning to sign ACTA this weekend in Japan. In the US, this may very well lead to a Constitutional challenge. President Obama, via the USTR, is ignoring the Senate's oversight concerning treaties, by pretending ACTA is not a treaty, but rather an "executive agreement." Pretty much everyone else agrees that ACTA is a binding treaty -- in fact, EU negotiators have been quite vocal on that point.

But even if this is considered "an executive agreement," the President does not have the authority to sign an executive agreement concerning intellectual property issues. Executive agreements can only be signed if they cover issues solely under the President's mandate. But intellectual property issues are clearly under Congress's mandate, and nowhere in the Constitution is the President given a mandate over IP issues. This is a clear end-run around Congress, and seems likely to be unconstitutional.

What I really don't get is why they're making such an end-run. As we've seen with things like PROTECT IP, most of the Senate seems to have no problem propping up the entertainment industry's legacy players with bogus laws and "greater enforcement." It seems likely that ACTA would probably sail through the Senate with little problem. But the administration seems to not even want to have the slightest debate on the topic -- which is greatly troubling, considering that the USTR negotiated the agreement in near total secrecy, refusing to allow public comment or debate (outside of leaks which it tried to block) until after the document was done.

The others that are listed as planning to sign the document are Japan, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland. Basically all the countries who took part in the negotiations. The fact that Mexico is on that list is interesting, given that the Mexican Congress has already told the Mexican President that it will not ratify ACTA, and made it clear that Mexico needs Congress to ratify ACTA to have it go into effect. In other words, it sounds like Mexico is facing a similar executive run-around as in the US.

It's pretty amazing. This isn't even just about Presidents doing an end-run around the public, but around their own legislatures. And for what? A bailout of some legacy entertainment industry players who are unwilling to adapt.

Filed Under: acta, australia, canada, constitution, eu, executive agreement, mexico, new zealand, treaty, us, ustr

EU Parliament Member Asks EU Commission What It Will Do If Italy Approves One Strike Copyright Law

from the good-for-her dept

We recently wrote about a ridiculous copyright law being proposed in Italy, that could ban people from using the internet based on a single accusation of infringement. As we noted, the law did not appear to agree with overall EU law. Some in the EU Parliament are taking notice. MEP Marietje Schaake has now officially posed a Parliamentary question to the EU Commission questioning how it would respond to such a law:

Via the press it has come to my attention that the Italian Parliament is currently considering a draft law by which internet users can be disconnected and blacklisted if they have been accused on an intellectual property infringement. The accusation does not necessarily need to originate from the rights holder of the work in question.

The draft law as it is proposed, violates several EU laws and principles, including:

- Article 1(3a) of the telecoms package, amending the Framework Directive 2002/21/EC,
- Article 6 ECHR concerning a fair trail
- Article 10 ECHR concerning the freedom to seek, receive and impart information,
- The principles of necessity and proportionality, and,
- Depending on implementation, the exemptions of intermediary liability in E-Commerce Directive 2000/31/EC,

Does the Commission agree the Italian proposal is in violation with EU laws and principles? If not, why not? What concrete action will the Commission undertake to put a halt to measures being implemented by Member States by which citizens may be disconnected from the internet?

While it will be interesting to see how the EU Commission responds, just the fact that such questions are being asked should hopefully generate some attention to this awful proposal.

Filed Under: eu, eu commission, eu parliament, italy, marietje schaake

EU Commissioner Asks Big Copyright To Increase Their Lobbying Efforts For More Draconian Copyright Law

from the of-course-he-does dept

EU Commissioner Karel de Gucht has been the EU's main supporter behind ACTA. de Gucht was caught lying about ACTA last year to get it approved (telling EU members that ACTA fit under existing laws, and only later admitting some members might have to change their laws). He also refused to turn over some important documents requested by an EU Parliament member concerning ACTA, claiming that (contrary to what the law says) as long as he answered questions, he didn't have to turn over the documents.

So it probably comes as little surprise that, in a recent speech about intellectual property issues in Europe, he directly appealed to copyright holders to increase their lobbying, because those darn critics of stronger copyright apparently are speaking up too much:

I would like to call upon you to support our efforts to improve and implement IPR regimes in a more active manner. The European Commission defends your interests by promoting the development of effective IP systems, within the EU and also in third countries. However, we are increasingly faced with loud voices that come out against IP for many different reasons, often unfounded. We need you to help us to help you by enlarging the debate.

This is pretty funny. The debate has been totally and completely owned by those in favor of stricter, more draconian copyright law -- contrary to almost all evidence on the best levels of intellectual property rules and enforcement. The critics simply don't get heard at all.

Filed Under: copyright, eu, karel de gucht, lobbying

EU Officially Seizes The Public Domain, Retroactively Extends Copyright

from the stealing-from-the-public dept

As was unfortunately expected, despite no evidence that this made any economic sense at all, the member states of the EU have agreed to retroactively extend copyright another 20 years, at which point you can expect it to be extended again (thanks to jtdeboe for sending this over). This is nothing short of governments and the entertainment industry seizing works from the public domain. As we've said before, the purpose of copyright law is to incent the creation of new works. If existing copyright law was enough to incentivize the creation at the time, then there's simply no reason to retroactively extend the law.

This proposal, which various studies have shown will do little to help content creators, has been pushed for a long time by the record labels. It had been blocked in Europe for a while, but for reasons unknown, Denmark recently changed its mind, thereby enabling this effort to flat out seize material from the public.

It's especially sad that this comes just a few months after the Hargreaves report, which explicitly points out that so much policy is made without evidence -- and copyright extension is a perfect example of that. Citizens of the EU: your politicians just sold you out to the record labels, taking away content that was legally yours and no longer will be.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright extension, eu

EU Politicians Realize US View Of De Facto Ownership Of The Internet Makes Their Data Protection Laws Irrelevant

from the jurisdictional-mess dept

One of the topics that we've discussed since the very beginning of Techdirt is the odd questions of jurisdiction raised by the internet. Pre-internet, most (though not all) jurisdiction questions where fairly straightforward: where was the alleged infraction/crime committed. Once you added the internet to the question, things got weird fast and no one seemed to really want to deal with it. Over the years, there have been some flareups here and there, but over the last couple of years, one thing has started to become clear: the US government feels that it has jurisdiction over much of the internet, even as it decries any other country that suggests something similar.

As we noted recently, folks, like Erik Barnett at Homeland Security, have a rather expansive view over why the US has jurisdiction over any website using a .com or .net domain name. And, of course, it goes way beyond that as well, with the recent admissions from Microsoft that EU data protection rules are effectively meaningless when faced with a US PATRIOT Act request for data. Basically, the US appears to claim that even if the data is stored in Europe, with strict data protection rules, if it's a US company, the US believes it has jurisdiction and can demand access to it.

Not surprisingly, this is upsetting EU officials, who realize that their data protection rules may be effectively meaningless if the US continues to take this rather expansive view of its own jurisdiction.

While you can understand why US officials and law enforcement want to view the world this way, what stuns me is that they appear to be both totally tone deaf to how this makes the US look abroad, as well as oblivious to the obvious unintended consequences and likely counter moves to such a view. Not only does it give moral cover to other countries doing the same thing -- potentially harming US interests significantly -- it's also going to lead to inevitable backlash and widespread harm to US companies and internet users, as users in foreign countries won't go near their services.

This is what happens when you have people who can't think more than single step ahead and put them in a position of power.

Filed Under: data protection, eu, europe, jurisdiction, ownership, patriot act, privacy

EU Council Trying To Push Through ACTA Without Much Scrutiny

from the but-of-course dept

About a month ago, we noted that EU ACTA supporters were hoping to rush through the signing of ACTA in the EU, despite serious concern from the EU Parliament, who wanted to review it to make sure it didn't actually go against current EU law. It appears the push to get it signed quickly without review is ramping up. Glyn Moody points us to a report noting a quietly released document (pdf) from the Council of the European Union, that appears to support signing ACTA without further review. The document makes a number of highly questionable statements:

ACTA is a balanced agreement, because it fully respects the rights of citizens and the concerns of important stakeholders such as consumers, internet providers and partners in developing countries.

Almost none of that is true. There is no balance in the document. The document did not make much of an effort to "respect the rights of citizens." And "consumers, internet providers and partners in developing nations" were kept out of the negotiations for the most part, and not shown the document for comment until it was already set in stone. Developing nations, including Brazil and India have come out squarely against ACTA, noting that it did not take into account their views at all.

Basically, the statement here appears to be entirely false. When you have to flat-out lie to explain why you should support ACTA, it really becomes clear how bad the agreement is.

Regarding the signature and conclusion of ACTA, the Commission has opted not to propose that the European Union exercise its potential competence in the area of criminal enforcement pursuant to Article 83(2) TFEU. The Commission considers this appropriate because it has never been the intention, as regards the negotiation of ACTA to modify the EU acquis or to harmonise EU legislation as regards criminal enforcement of intellectual property rights. For this reason, the Commission proposes that ACTA be signed and concluded both by the EU and by all the Member States.

The wording here is a bit complex (perhaps on purpose), but it appears to basically be arguing that ACTA should be signed without the further reviews on the impact of it, because it's not intended to make any serious changes to the law. That it actually does require changes to laws is really of no concern, apparently.

Filed Under: acta, eu

New Report: IP Laws Are Crippling The EU Economy

from the economic-freedom-and-personal-freedom-go-hand-in-hand dept

Glyn Moody points us to a new report from the group EDRI, claiming that intellectual property is harming the economy of Europe. The group lists out a few key points:

• Harmonise exceptions to copyright to create legal certainty across the EU about the permitted uses of works covered by IP
• Establish pan-European licensing arrangements as a matter of priority, and tie future enforcement policy to the successful development of such proposals
• Abandon repressive enforcement measures that would materially damage people's fundamental rights
• Establishes a moratorium on the exporting of repressive IP enforcement to third countries
• Makes a firm commitment to robust, objective evidence and re-evaluation of policy on the basis of it.

Much of the report is about harmonizing both patent and copyright laws across Europe or creating pan-European infrastructure for patent and copyright laws. I'm of a mixed opinion on those proposals. While I can definitely see the problems of having so many different local patent and copyright laws, historically, attempts to "harmonize" such laws only lead to much more draconian laws with little flexibility. Having different laws in different places allows for countries to experiment with, perhaps, less protectionist efforts, and to show that you don't necessarily need greater protectionism for the economy to function. On top of that, in my discussions with people throughout Europe, one of the concerns with harmonization was that each market is so different, that a single set of laws would lead to very bad policies in certain countries.

However I do appreciate the concerns about repressive enforcement and the aggressive expansion of repressive enforcement to other countries. All in all, it does seem like another useful report on the problems of today's intellectual property laws.

Filed Under: economy, eu, intellectual property, ip