Hyperlinking to unlicensed Playboy photos is not copyright infringement says Advocate General

Hyperlinking to unlicensed Playboy photos is not copyright infringement says Advocate General - Lexology: "In order to establish an act of communication, the intervention of the ‘hyperlinker’ must be vital or indispensable in order to benefit from or enjoy the works. The AG referred to the case in Football Association Premier League and Others (C-403/08 and C-429/08) where the owner of a pub intentionally gave his customers access to a copyright-protected broadcast, without which access, they would not have been able to enjoy the broadcast works.

He considered that it had to follow that hyperlinks posted on a website which direct to copyright-protected works freely accessible on another website cannot be classified as an ‘act of communication’ because the intervention of the website operator which posts the hyperlink, in this case GS Media, is not vital or necessary to enable users to access the Playboy photographs, including those who visit the GeenStijl website.

It is also not sufficient that the hyperlink facilitates or simplifies users’ access to the work in question.
Even though GS Media was aware that the photographs on Filefactory.com and Imageshack.us had been leaked but had still provided hyperlinks on the GeenStijl website 'in flagrant violation of the rights of the author of those works', because there was no act of communication,

GS Media’s motives and the fact that it was or ought to have been aware that the initial communication of those photographs on the other websites had not been authorised by Sanoma were irrelevant." 'via Blog this'

Eric Goldman: intermediary liability and S.230 CDA 1996

Eric Goldman: intermediary liability and S.230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996 : News and events : ... : Law : University of Sussex: "Thursday 14 April
13:00 until 14:00
Moot Room, Freeman Building

Speaker: Eric Goldman
Add this event to your calendar

Professor Eric Goldman visits Sussex to speak about intermediary liability and the most important legislation in the history of internet law: S.230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996.

Professor Goldman is the world’s leading academic expert on the subject, having taught internet law since 1995. Eric Goldman is a Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law, where he is also Director of the school’s High Tech Law Institute." 'via Blog this'

GDPR - ST_5419_2016_INIT - EN - EUR-Lex

EUR-Lex - ST_5419_2016_INIT - EN - EUR-Lex: "REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation)

ST 5419 2016 INIT - 2012/011 (OLP)" 'via Blog this'

Joined Cases C-293/12 & 594/12 Digital Rights Ireland & Seitlinger: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Joined Cases C-293/12 and 594/12 Digital Rights Ireland and Seitlinger and Others: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly |: "In its eagerly anticipated judgment in the Digital Rights Ireland case, the European Court of Justice held that the EU legislature had exceeded the limits of the principle of proportionality in relation to certain provisions of the EU Charter (Articles 7, 8 and 52(1)) by adopting the Data Retention Directive. In this regard, the reasoning of the Court resembled that of its Advocate General (the facts of these proceedings and an analysis of the Advocate General’s Opinion have been the subject of a previous blog post). However, unlike the Advocate General, the Court deemed the Directive to be invalid without limiting the temporal effects of its finding. This post will consider the Court’s main findings before commenting on the good, the bad and the ugly in the judgment." 'via Blog this'

How 'unfriendly' ISP cables are tapped

https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/715547487231152128

Infringing Website List (IWL) - Intellectual Property Office with no due process

Infringing Website List (IWL) - YouTube: "Mar 24, 2016
This film explains how brands and advertising companies can sign up to the IWL to stop their ads appearing on illegal websites" 'via Blog this'

Guerilla Cyclist — Hogan Lovells' assessment of Privacy Shield is as...

Guerilla Cyclist — Hogan Lovells' assessment of Privacy Shield is as...: "I wonder if the Commission asked Hogan Lovells to write an opinion on how a successor to SH could be made to meet the requirements of the EU Court of Justice (Digital Rights Ireland and Schremms); and if this present HL analysis is actually a re-use of that opinion, with the original being kept secret as “legally privileged”.
The Privacy Shield (PS) is linked in an odd way to a bunch of other documents, including letters from various US officials, listed on p. 28, the precise status of which are seriously unclear.

 The report makes this odd remark about them (directly underneath the list):
“Taken together these letters are presented as binding commitments from the US government that there are meaningful and effective limitations on the US government’s access to data transferred under the Privacy Shield.”

What the hell does that mean? Are they binding:
In international law — do they constitute a treaty between the EU and the USA in the sense of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties?
in US law? What exactly is the status of these “letters”? Can they be relied upon in US courts by EU data subjects?
Even from a quick reading, I can see at least four further crucial defects in the Hogan Lovells analysis:" 'via Blog this'