Embedded Videos and copyright

Embedded Videos

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has recently ruled on a matter of copyright within Youtube videos. BestWater International Case (C-348/13). A German court relying on the EU power to seek the CJEU guidance on EU legal matters referred it. The material facts were that the applicant objected that two rival contractors had linked embedded youtube material from the applicant without permission on the rival's website

The legal question was

“

Does the embedding, within one’s own website, of another person’s work made available to the public on a third-party website, in circumstances such as those in the main proceedings, constitute communication to the public within the meaning of Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC, 1 even where that other person’s work is not thereby communicated to a new public and the communication of the work does not use a specific technical means which differs from that of the original communication?”

- Link to CJEU.

Result: Embedding a Youtube video on a 3^rd party site is not an infringement of copyright.

Context:

Taking a definition of copyright as “ that is is an identifier placed on works to inform the world of ownership”- “Fashion Law” by Ursula Furi-Perry.

My own understanding of embedding would be to hyperlink to another web-location and allow content, in this case a video, to be played.

Of interest: EU Copyright directive can be found here: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32001L0029

Currently the judgement is only in German.

Ich kann nicht sprechen gut Deutsch : http://www.scribd.com/doc/244360017/EuGH-C-348-13-Framing (auf Deutesh) So my understanding is sparse, to say the least.

Comment:

So to peek beneath the surface of this ruling there are always a number of factors which influence the outcome: both the explicit ones of both public policy reasons for the “social good” and as part of the foundation impetus of the EU to boost trade as well as factors, borrowed from Posner's law and economics, on how well the embedded stakeholders have managed to lobbied so as to have their world view taken as the normative scenario. However, based on the outcome it seems common sense has prevailed.

Long term, what will be the fallout? i.e. does the rather overused term landmark belong to this.

Overall a cautious welcome. While it is rather trite at this stage to state that “Information wants to be free”, it can hardly be said that material on Youtube is out of the way. The material was in no way illegal uploaded onto the site or illegally kept their by the site's owners.

In fact, the ability to disable embedding was present.

“

If you've uploaded a video and do not want to allow others to embed your video on external sites, here's how to disable the option:

Visit your Video Manager.

Find the video you'd like to change and click Edit.

Click Advanced Settings under the video.

Uncheck the Allow Embedding checkbox under the "Distribution Options" section.

Click Save changes at the bottom of the page.

” https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/171780?hl=en, accessed 02/11/2014

Hence overkill. De minimus non curat lex, and this is rather an excellent reason for this to be followed. Thus the speed which the court dealt with this can be commended.

Interesting other view on this:

“The CJEU Continues to be the Court of Common Sense: The BestWater Case Ruling or Another Good Day for the Internet” -link.