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The European Court of Justice (ECJ) held that the video streaming of television broadcasts by a third party triggers a copyright breach, but what are the consequences on recent Italian case laws?
In a case involving TV Catchup a service allowing the live streaming of TV broadcasts on computers, smartphones or games consoles only by the people located in the area where such persons could legally watch the program under their TV license, the ECJ held that the copyright owner’s right to authorize a “communication to the public” extended to the retrasmission of terrestrial television broadcast works performed by any entity other than the broadcaster and even if the streaming was available also in a limited area where subscribers could legally watch the program.
What are the consequences of this decision on recent Italian disputes involving video sharing websites such as YouTube? Well, the position of Italian courts on that has always been very straight forward as to the copyright breach occurring through the publication of the video by the users, but it will be interesting to see whether this decision will be used to deem video sharing websites liable for users’ contents after that the same ECJ held that video sharing websites are not obliged to monitor the contents published by their users.
Do you want to discuss the above? Feel free to contact me, Giulio Coraggio.
