EU Court Rules Embedding YouTube Videos Is Not Copyright Infringement 68
Maurits van der Schee writes "The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that embedding a copyrighted YouTube video in your site is not copyright infringement. From the article: "The case in question was referred to EU’s Court of Justice by a German court. It deals with a dispute between the water filtering company BestWater International and two men who work as independent commercial agents for a competitor. Bestwater accused the men of embedding one of their promotional videos, which was available on YouTube without the company’s permission. The video was embedded on the personal website of the two through a frame, as is usual with YouTube videos. While EU law is clear on most piracy issues, the copyright directive says very little about embedding copyrighted works. The Court of Justice, however, now argues that embedding is not copyright infringement."
Re:Bit too late (Score:5, Interesting)
For those kids who got shipped out to the USA for linking videos. If only they had embedded them.
In fact, the same court had already ruled in a earlier case (Svensson [torrentfreak.com]) that linking to a file does not constitute copyright infringement either.
The court doesn't seem - at least from this report - to have taken into account that the uploader on YouTube has the ability to permit or deny this embedding, which would have strengthened the argument that it is that uploader who was to blame, not others linking to the video there. I wonder if the copyright owner went after them as well - considering a copyright takedown against the video on YouTube would have disabled the embedded view anyway?
What could be interesting here is how this relates to recent UK court orders forcing the largest UK ISPs to censor access to "pirate" websites like TPB, some of which also merely link to files which may be online in breach of copyright?
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In the case of TPB, Swedish court ruled that they did not commit copyright infringement, but aided and encouraged such actions by others, even though no crime could be proven. How that would work out in an EU court is hard to predict.
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In the case of TPB, Swedish court ruled that they did not commit copyright infringement, but aided and encouraged such actions by others, even though no crime could be proven. How that would work out in an EU court is hard to predict.
I wouldn't use that as a reference to how a Swedish court would rule in the future either.
The entire TPB case is such a major clusterfuck of retardedness and corruption mixed up.
It is supposed to be illegal for the Ministry of Justice to be involved in specific cases, the officer in charge of the raid was on Warners payroll, the Judge were a member of the same copyright interest group as the Swedish equivalent to RIAA and the prosecutor had just a month before the raid concluded that TPB didn't do anything
Justice (Score:5, Funny)
The fact that we need a court to decide that "embedding a copyrighted YouTube video in your site is not copyright infringement." is already a failure of the system as a whole.
Next we'll have the court deciding that "Mentioning the fact that you saw a video on YouTube is not copyright infringement as long as you specify you don't know whether the video was copyrighted or otherwise."
(I now wonder if this post is copyright infringement. After all, I'm replying an article about a court ruling about people who embedded in their web pages videos from Youtube which were copyrighted! ... OMG I don't want to die in prison!)
Re:Justice (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that we need a court to decide that "embedding a copyrighted YouTube video in your site is not copyright infringement." is already a failure of the system as a whole.
No, that's one of the things a court is for: Clear up legal facts if they are not explicitely stated in the law. The E.U. copyright directive and the laws in different countries don't mention embedding, and thus a court decides when the question comes up. In this case, the system works exactly as it is supposed to be.
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Now we just need a court to rule that torrent links are not copyright infringement either.
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Why go even further and get a court to rule that any link is equivalent to a bibliographical reference/citation in a printed book/journal - that is telling you where to find the referenced item.
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The E.U. copyright directive and the laws in different countries don't mention embedding, and thus a court decides
That was the point. The fact that embedding is not described in the law means that this is a failure. Please read the original comment again if you still don't get it.
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You'd have 10000 pages on how to eat a peanut legally if that were so.
You haven't read much EU legislation, have you?
I wouldn't be surprised if such a document didn't already exist, and no, I am not joking.
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Correlation != causation.
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No, that is silly. Courts are there to clear up legal facts *when the law is unclear*.
You don't need a court to declare breathing, eating and any number of other things to be legal, even though none of those are mentioned in law.
Yes, some people *would like* linking and embedding to be illegal. They try their best to pervert the law to benefit them, and this includes abusing the legal system by having it rule on obvious issues like this. It's not what courts are for, it is abuse.
Obviously, what is "unclear"
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The courts are there to decide the cases that are brought before them. If someone chooses to bring an action for copyright infringement in a particular circumstance then it's the function of the courts to decide the case.
The wisdom of bringing, contesting or appealing cases is really a matter for litigants and their legal advisers; not for the court.
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Then again it also means I can take the content created by anyone on youtube and embed it into my own ad-studded website and make cashy money from their efforts.
I think youtube throttles down performance for embedded videos though, just from personal observation.
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...that's one of the things a court is for: Clear up legal facts if they are not explicitely stated in the law.
You just restated his argument using different words.
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Now such a comment shows you have a serious problem - one with not thinking through the problem, and showing a thorough lack of understanding of even the basics of the concept of copyright. Note that every video, every work out there is copyrighted. Also your home videos. The whole notion of those anti-copying groups that say "don't share copyrighted material" is stupid - whether you can share copyrighted material with third parties depends on whether the copyright owner has given permission or not. Simply
Sad, sad, sad (Score:1)
Embedded is one of those fuzzy words (Score:2, Informative)
The term embedded in this context just means a fancy type of hyperlink that displays contents from another site on your webpage. This is exactly equivalent to hotlinking images, and it can be stopped in exactly the same way. Anyhow, hyperlinks are not infringement, so it's obvious by extension that embedded linking isn't infrintement either.
It's probably important to note that embedding a link to a pirated copy of the work doesn't magically make the pirated copy legal.
I think it just means that only the sit
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The term embedded in this context just means a fancy type of hyperlink that displays contents from another site on your webpage. This is exactly equivalent to hotlinking images, and it can be stopped in exactly the same way. Anyhow, hyperlinks are not infringement, so it's obvious by extension that embedded linking isn't infrintement either.
If I had mod points...
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If anyone was claiming that everything the EU does is wrong, then you'd have a point.
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Have you met Mr Farage?
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Nope. He might be very strongly against the UK being part of the EU, but I don't know that he's dumb enough to suggest that literally everything they do it bad.
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the thing is, sometimes it's better to have a court 'far away' decide whats fair. they don't need to think about local interest groups, who they're fucking etc..
this is why I still think it was a good decision to go into EU by Finland - so that our mp's and toll fucks couldn't make us pay full brand new tax on used fucking cars from germany.
Internet vs meatspace (Score:3)
This is an interesting ruling because, currently in the US, playing a radio station over speakers in a business is copyright infringement. This is very close to the meatspace equivalent of embedding a copyrighted work. Since this is an EU case it obviously would not hold a great deal of weight in a US court (though international rulings are considered in some cases), but it brings up an interesting dissonance in copyright law.
Re:Internet vs meatspace (Score:4, Informative)
This is an interesting ruling because, currently in the US, playing a radio station over speakers in a business is copyright infringement. This is very close to the meatspace equivalent of embedding a copyrighted work
No, in fact it's nothing like that whatsoever. If the EU had ruled that it was legal to display youtube videos in a public place for the purposes of entertainment, then it would be similar. It isn't. There is no parallel here.
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Exactly! Because a website is clearly not a public place used for the purpose of entertainment.
It's amusing that you were trying to be sarcastic, because your statement is clearly correct. A website is not a place. It's a piece of media. New situations require new rules. I'm enjoying websites in my office, which is not a public place. If you were to present my website as a public performance without my permission, that would be stupid and weird, and you would owe me some money. Obviously, if your performance is a live critique of people's blogs, your audience is stupid, and that would be fair use. Bu
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Sure. But isn't that just a technicality?
What else is there when you're writing laws?
In practical terms, the suggested example of re-broadcasting radio in a store is the same.
It really isn't, because of the difference between a website and a public place.
In both cases someone's work is being presented to an audience in a context that someone else controls,
Youtube lets you prevent embedding.
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Really? You are mistaking the rebroadcast as "entertainment" whereas it's generally background sound, not the primary purpose of the business. Music played in a retail store is a good example. People don't come to the store to be entertained by the music, they come to shop for clothes. The purpose of the music is to help set a mood, just as the posters on the wall, or the color of the carpet, or the type and style of lighting.
Lets look at it as a public place - you say that a website isn't one, but it's acc
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People don't come to the store to be entertained by the music, they come to shop for clothes.
Right?
You are mistaking the rebroadcast as "entertainment" whereas it's generally background sound, [...] The purpose of the music is to help set a mood, just as the posters on the wall, or the color of the carpet, or the type and style of lighting.
Yeah, you pay for all of those things. And thanks to copyright law, you pay when you play music for your shoppers. And "setting a mood" is the same thing as "entertainment". The difference is that the entertainment is not the primary purpose of the business, but that's a difference without a distinction. The purpose is to entertain people on some level so that they will shop in your store. If it didn't have value, they wouldn't play it.
Amazon's only merchant space is a website. If this were to be adopted in the US, then Amazon could link copyrighted videos via YouTube on their site.
And guess what? They already can, but for different reasons. Namel
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This is an interesting ruling because, currently in the US, playing a radio station over speakers in a business is copyright infringement. This is very close to the meatspace equivalent of embedding a copyrighted work
No, in fact it's nothing like that whatsoever. If the EU had ruled that it was legal to display youtube videos in a public place for the purposes of entertainment, then it would be similar. It isn't. There is no parallel here.
A web site on the Internet is quite arguably the cyberspace equivalent to a public place.
The display of a YouTube video on a screen in your shop, streaming from YouTube, is quite arguably the same as embedding it in your web site.
A lot will depend on the copyright license of the material in question. You're certainly allowed to play music in your store if you get explicit permission from the copyright owner of this music to use their material in your shop. Maybe they even come and play live in your shop. If
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Embedding is something unique only to the "cyber" world. About the closest equival
Crazy EU logic (again) (Score:2)
There is every difference between embedded content and linked content.
If you rip the video, store it on your site, then display it, there is absolutely no visible difference to the reader.
How do the underlying mechanics of how it got there change anything?
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Well, if a copy is made, you lose the possibility of removing the content or changing it.
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OK that's fair enough, it does make a difference to how easily the problem is tackled once the infringement is discovered.
But I'm still not convinced that an irate copyright holder who finds their content on a Web page actually cares whether it's embedded or not, or should even have to care.
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In the embedded scenario the owner retains control. Frankly said owner should simply disallow embedding and let the embedder look like an idiot until they realize what they did.
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There's a very distinct difference between "rip the video, store it on your site, then display it" and embedding. Ripping/storing is a very deliberate act to copy something.
Simply embedding a video (or an image, or anything else, one would suppose) on a site makes no copies of it, and so, as per the ruling is not copyright infringement. If you're a copyright holder and have a problem with something you can see embedded on a page, go after the person/site hosting the content. That makes pretty good sense to
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And if the content was a video that you (the copyright holder) uploaded to YouTube, then simply edit the video and set it to disallow embedding. Your embedding problem will be solved with zero lawyer costs and in less time than it would take to fire off a "Don't Embed Our Content" C&D letter. If the website then rips your video from YouTube and displays it on thei
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It certainly does depend on whether the crime is the end result of deivering the material, or the process of duplication. Different courts seem to have different opinions on the matter.
So now ... (Score:2)
So now don't they have to pretty much make the only consistent and logical conclusion ... that linking to something is in no way copyright infringement?
They won't, of course, but haven't the courts previously said that linking to a place which does copyright infringement (or tells you how) is the same as infringing?
So how can you possibly claim that embedding a link to a video which is served from someone else is any different? If I can embed a link to a YouTube video, how am I infringing any less than poi
I am assuming that this applies... (Score:2)