14 DAY TRIAL // The European Court of Justice has recently ruled that Internet users within the member states cannot be accused of copyright infringement just for viewing something online, which means that cached copies of lawful material on their hard drives are safe to have.
The court took five years to settle the case after a media-monitoring firm called Melwater, along with the Public Relations Consultants Association, has filed a lawsuit in the British copyright tribunal against the Newspaper Licensing Agency from the UK, arguing against a previous decision.
The initial ruling from the British court said that Internet users needed a license to store temporary copies of webpages on their computers. Now, after the case was taken to the European Court of Justice, the ruling was reversed.
The judges decided that the law must be interpreted as meaning that the temporary on-screen copies and the cached copies made by an end-user in the course of viewing a website could be created and held without the explicit authorization of the copyright holders.
There is a “but” to the ruling, however, since it indicates that the temporary copies should really be “transient or incidental in nature,” or an “essential part of a technological process.”
“We are utterly delighted that the CJEU has accepted all of our arguments against the NLA, which represents eight national newspapers. The Court of Justice, like the Supreme Court before them, understands that the NLA’s attempts to charge for reading online content do not just affect the PR world, but the fundamental rights of all EU citizens to browse the internet,” said Francis Ingham, general director for the Public Relations Consultants Association.
He added that this is a huge step in the right direction for the courts as they seek ways to deal with the issues of internet use and copyright law. The decision is also seen as a major move that sets an important precedent for Internet freedom in the European Union.
Despite being on the losing side, the Newspaper Licensing Agency says that the decision taken by the European Court of Justice will have no impact on the license issued to media monitoring agencies.
“Media monitoring agencies still require a license to copy online content to create paid-for services for their clients and their clients still need a license to receive those services. This ruling does not change anything in that,” said David Pugh, managing director of the NLA.