Tilburg University
Personal data protection as a nonfunctional requirement in the Smart City's
development
Dalla Corte, Lorenzo; van Loenen, Bastiaan; Cuijpers, Colette
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Managing Risk in the Digital Society
Publication date: 2017
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Dalla Corte, L., van Loenen, B., & Cuijpers, C. (2017). Personal data protection as a nonfunctional requirement in the Smart City's development. In Managing Risk in the Digital Society: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Internet, Law & Politics Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
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Actas del 13º Congreso Internacional Internet, Derecho y
Política. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, 29-30
de junio de 2017
Managing Risk In the Digital Society
Proceedings of the 13
thInternational Conference on Internet,
Law & Politics. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya,
Barcelona, 29-30 June, 2017
COORDINADORES
Benjamí Anglès Juanpere, Joan Balcells Padullés, Rosa Borge Bravo, Ana María Delgado García, Mirela Fiori, Maria Julià Barceló, Alessandro Mantelero, Clara Marsan Raventós, María José Pifarré de Moner, Mònica Vilasau Solana
© 2017, Los autores © 2017, Huygens Editorial Padua, 20 bajo 1 08023 Barcelona www.huygens.es ISBN: 978-84-697-4474-1 Editado en España
INTRODUCCIÓN / INTRODUCTION ... 14
PROPIEDAD INTELECTUAL / INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY TOO STRICT TO SUCCEED: HOW JUDGES STEP IN TO SEEK AND PROTECT FLEXIBILITY IN COPYRIGHT LAW. Kasper Drążewski ... 19
1. INTRODUCTION ... 19
2. THE ROOTS OF FLEXIBILITY: FAIR USE RULINGS IN THE U.S. ... 21
2.1. Flexibility in ‘pre-transformative use’ justifications ... 21
2.1.1. Even fair use must be applied flexibly: Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises ... 22
2.2. Transformative use: a (vague) remedy to vagueness? ... 23
2.3. Non-paradigm cases: a flexible approach to the doctrine ... 23
2.3.1. Dr. Seuss v. Penguin Books ... 24
2.3.2. AP v. Meltwater ... 25
2.4. Looking for flexibility without fair use: examples of European copyright cases ... 26
2.4.1. Vorschaubilder I ... 26
2.4.2. Vorschaubilder II ... 28
2.4.3. SAIF v. Google Inc. and Google France ... 30
2.4.4. Megakini v. Google ... 32
3. SUMMARY ... 34
4. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 35
DIGITAL SINGLE MARKET: A LONG WAY TO GO. Viola Elam ... 37
A PROPOSED MODEL FOR THE LEGAL STATUS OF CREATIONS BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLI-GENCE SYSTEMSCREATIONS. Ana Ramalho ... 38
1. INTRODUCTION ... 38
2. CAN THE CURRENT COPYRIGHT FRAMEWORK OF AUTHORHSIP ACCOMMO-DATE AIS AS CREATORS? ... 39
2.1. The United States ... 39
2.2. The European Union ... 40
2.3. Australia ... 43
2.4. Interim conclusion ... 44
4. SHOULD COPYRIGHT PROTECT AIS AS AUTHORS? ... 47
4.1. Why? Copyright rationales ... 47
4.2. RelatedO: related rights rationales ... 50
4.3. A proposal: public domain? ... 51
5. CONCLUSION ... 53
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 54
POLICING TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT ON ONLINE SELLING PLATFORMS - AN ACCOUNT OF TENSIONS BETWEEN ISP LIABLITY, TRADEMARK PROTECTION AND COMPETITION LAW IN THE EU. Maria José Schmidt-Kessen ... 56
1. INTRODUCTION ... 56
2. TRADEMARK PROTECTION AND ISP LIABILITY ... 58
2.1. Increase in counterfeit trade as a challenge to trademark protection ... 58
2.2. EU Trademark Law and the IP Enforcement Directive ... 59
2.3. Online intermediary liability for trademark infringement – the CJEU’s interpretation of the E-commerce Directive ... 61
2.4. Economic inefficiency of the online intermediary liability regime as interpreted by the CJEU ... 64
3. EU COMPETITION LAW AS AN OBSTACLE TO AN EFFICIENT TRADEMARK PRO-TECTION SYSTEM IN ONLINE RETAIL? ... 66
3.1. Internet selling bans and the CJEU judgment in Pierre Fabre ... 66
3.2. National Competition Authorities’ and courts’ assessment of online selling restraints ... 69
3.3. Making the tension visible ... 70
4. AN OPPORTUNITY TO ADDRESS THE TENSION - CASE C-230/16 COTY V AK-ZENTE ... 71
5. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 72
PRIVACIDAD Y PROTECCIÓN DE DATOS / PRIVACY & DATA PROTECTION A SWISS CHEESE? AUTOMATED DECISION MAKING AND ALGORITHMIC TRANSPAREN-CY IN THE EU DATA PROTECTION LEGISLATION. Maja Brkan ... 75
PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION AS A NONFUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENT IN THE SMART CITY’S DEVELOPMENT. Lorenzo Dalla Corte, Bastiaan van Loenen, Colette Cuijpers ... 76
1. INTRODUCTION ... 76
2. WHAT IS A SMART CITY?... 78
2.1. The instrumentation of the built environment ... 81
2.2. Technology as policy ... 83
3. DATA PROTECTION AS A NONFUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENT ... 84
3.1. The right to data protection in the smart city environment ... 85
4. CONCLUSION ... 89
5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... 89
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 89
LA RESPONSABILIDAD CIVIL DE LOS PADRES Y CENTROS EDUCATIVOS POR EL USO INDEBIDO POR LOS MENORES DE LAS REDES SOCIALES. Patricia Escribano Tortajada ... 93
1. INTRODUCCIÓN ... 93
2. REDES SOCIALES: CONCEPTO, TIPOLOGÍA Y EDAD MÍNIMA PARA SU ACCESO .... 94
3. EL USO DE INTERNET Y LAS REDES SOCIALES POR PARTE DE LOS MENORES .... 97
4. LA SENTENCIA DE LA AUDIENCIA PROVINCIAL DE GUIPÚZCOA 139/2016, DE 27 DE MAYO ... 100
5. LA RESPONSABILIDAD CIVIL DE LOS PROGENITORES Y LOS CENTROS EDUCA-TIVOS ... 103
6. CONCLUSIONES ... 106
7. BIBLIOGRAFÍA ... 106
RIESGOS JURÍDICOS DE LA INSPECCIÓN PROFUNDA DE PAQUETES TCP/IP. José Luis González San Juan ... 109
1. INTRODUCCIÓN ... 109
2. CONCEPTOS PREVIOS ... 110
2.1. Red distribuida y principio end-to-end: la neutralidad de red ... 110
2.2. Modelo ISO de Interconexión de Sistemas Abiertos y protocolos TCP/IP ... 111
2.3. Empaquetado de los datos en Internet ... 111
3. INSPECCIÓN PROFUNDA DE PAQUETES ... 113
4. PRINCIPALES USOS DE LA INSPECCIÓN PROFUNDA DE PAQUETES ... 114
4.1. Usos privados ... 114
4.2. Usos públicos ... 115
5. RIESGOS JURÍDICOS DE LA INSPECCIÓN PROFUNDA DE PAQUETES ... 116
5.1. Conflictos con el secreto de las comunicaciones ... 116
5.2. Conflictos con la intimidad personal y familiar ... 118
5.3. Conflictos con la Protección de Datos de Carácter Personal ... 119
5.4. Conflictos con las Libertades de Expresión y de Información ... 120
5.5. Otros Riesgos Jurídicos de la DPI ... 121
6. ENCAJE DE LA DPI EN LA LEGISLACIÓN ACTUAL... 122
7. MEDIDAS PARA MINIMIZAR LOS RIESGOS DE LA DPI ... 123
8. CONCLUSIONES ... 125
9. BIBLIOGRAFÍA ... 126
BUILDING A CYBERSECURITY CULTURE IN THE EU THROUGH MANDATORY NOTIFICA-TION OF DATA BREACHES AND INCIDENTS: DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES OF DATA VULNERABILITY REPORTING TOOLS. Lina Jasmontaite ... 129
2. INCIDENT NOTIFICATION UNDER THE NIS DIRECTIVE ... 131
2.1. The NIS Directive ... 131
2.2. Incident notification: New wine in old bottles ... 132
2.2.1. Definitions ... 132
2.3. The rationale ... 133
2.4. Practical implementation: High hopes for implementing acts... 135
2.5. Vision of notifications: Close cooperation of all stakeholders ... 136
2.6. A light-touch regime for providers of digital services? ... 136
3. DATA BREACH NOTIFICATION UNDER THE GDPR ... 137
3.1. The GDPR ... 137
3.2. Definitions ... 138
3.3. The rationale ... 139
3.4. Not a game changer but… ... 140
4. INCIDENT NOTIFICATION AND DATA BREACHES: A COMPARISON OF APPLES AND ORANGES ... 141
5. CONCLUSION ... 142
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 142
THE GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION AND THE RISE OF CERTIFICATION AS A REGULATORY INSTRUMENT. Eric Lachaud ... 144
1. INTRODUCTION ... 144
2. REGULATORY NATURE OF CERTIFICATION ... 146
2.1. Moving target ... 147
2.2. Extending Scope ... 150
2.3. GDPR and certification of fundamental rights ... 154
3. DATA PROTECTION MAKES OF CERTIFICATION A MONITORED SELF-REGULA-TION TOOL ... 159 3.1. Self-regulation ... 160 3.2. Co-regulation ... 162 3.2 Monitored self-regulation ... 167 4. CONCLUSION ... 168 5. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 169
A TALE OF TWO RIGHTS: THE CLASH AND COLLABORATION OF RIGHT TO DATA PORTA-BILITY AND RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN. Wenlong Li ... 173
1. INTRODUCTION: GDPR AND TWO NOVEL RIGHTS ... 173
2.1. The right to be forgotten ... 175
2.2. The right to data portability ... 175
2. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TWO RIGHTS: Forgetfulness v. portability ... 177
2.1. From erasure to ‘be forgotten’ ... 177
2.2. Data portability and the precondition of data duplication ... 178
2.3. Forgetfulness v. portability ... 179
3.1. Human’s social nature and its reflection in the digital sphere ... 180
3.2. A comprehensive approach to privacy ... 180
3.2.1. Private-public dichotomy and the semi-private zone ... 181
3.2.2. Access-control dichotomy and control-based rights ... 182
3.2.3. Positive-negative freedoms ... 182
3.3 The balance: Interpretation of ‘without prejudice to’ ... 183
3.3.1. The GDPR solution ... 183
3.3.2. Lessons from access requirements ... 183
4. THE COLLABORATION: JOINT EXERCISE OF BOTH RIGHTS CONCERNED ... 185
4.1. Socio-economic context: the ‘Switching’ economy and individual use of personal data ... 186
4.2. Legal context: The failing consent mechanism and supplements of individual rights ... 187
5. CONCLUSION ... 189
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 190
PROTECCIÓN DE DATOS DESDE EL DISEÑO DE LOS PROCESOS: VENTAJAS Y DESVEN-TAJAS. Santiago Martín-Romo Romero, Carmen de Pablos Heredero ... 192
1. LA PRIVACIDAD DESDE EL DISEÑO ... 192
2. ESTUDIO REALIZADO ... 193
2.1. Las preguntas planteadas y las respuestas propuestas ... 193
2.2. Participantes en el estudio ... 199
2.3. Resultados obtenidos ... 200
3. CONCLUSIONES ... 204
4. BIBLIOGRAFÍA ... 208
EL NUEVO MODELO DE GOBERNANZA DEL DERECHO A LA PROTECCIÓN DE DATOS EN EUROPA. Ramón Martín Miralles López, Joana Marí Cardona ... 211
1. NECESIDAD DE UN CAMBIO DE MODELO ... 211
2. EL REGLAMENTO GENERAL DE PROTECCIÓN DE DATOS: UN MODELO EN-FOCADO A LA RESPONSABILIDAD Y A LA VALORACIÓN DEL RIESGO ... 213
2.1. Privacidad en el diseño y por defecto ... 214
2.2. Evaluación de impacto sobre la protección de datos (en adelante EIPD) ... 215
2.3. Principio de seguridad y gestión de riesgos ... 220
2.4. Delegado de protección de Datos ... 222
2.5. Autoridades de control ... 224
3. CONCLUSIONES ... 224
4. BIBLIOGRAFÍA ... 225
VIDA MÁS ALLÁ DE LA MUERTE (DIGITAL). LA PROTECCIÓN DE LAS VOLUNTADES DIGI-TALES EN LA REFORMA DEL DERECHO CIVIL CATALÁN. Albert Ruda González ... 226
1. INTRODUCCIÓN ... 226
3. LAS FIGURAS DEL SUCESOR Y DEL APODERADO DIGITALES ... 230
4. GESTIÓN DE LOS ACTIVOS O CUENTAS DIGITALES ... 233
5. CONCLUSIÓN ... 237
6. BIBLIOGRAFÍA ... 238
LAS ACCIONES COLECTIVAS DENTRO DEL MARCO DEL REGLAMENTO GENERAL DE PROTECCIÓN DE DATOS. Natalia Wilson Aponte ... 240
1. INTRODUCCIÓN ... 240
2. GENERALIDADES DE LAS ACCIONES COLECTIVAS EN LA UNIÓN EUROPEA ... 244
2.1. Las acciones colectivas en Estados miembros de la UE ... 246
2.2. Acciones colectivas en España ... 247
3. ACCIONES COLECTIVAS EN EL REGLAMENTO DE PROTECCIÓN DE DATOS ... 250
4. PROS Y CONTRAS ... 253
5. BIBLIOGRAFÍA ... 256
COMERCIO ELECTRÓNICO Y MERCADO DIGITAL / E-COMMERCE & DIGITAL MARKET THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION’S PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE E-COMMERCE SEC-TOR INQUIRY: COMPETITION ENFORCEMENT IN DIGITAL CONTENT MARKETS. Konstanti-na Bania ... 259
1. INTRODUCTION ... 259
2. BUNDLING OF RIGHTS ... 260
3. EXCLUSIVITY COMBINED WITH LONG DURATION ... 263
4. TERRITORIAL RESTRICTIONS ... 267
4.1. Specific market conditions from the perspective of rights holders ... 267
4.2. Specific market conditions from the perspective of licensees ... 268
5. CONCLUSIONS ... 269
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 270
EL SUMINISTRO INMEDIATO DE INFORMACIÓN EN EL IMPUESTO SOBRE EL VALOR AÑADIDO. Ana María Delgado García, Rafael Oliver Cuello ... 273
1. INTRODUCCIÓN ... 273
2. OBJETIVOS DEL NUEVO SISTEMA DE GESTIÓN ... 275
3. ÁMBITO SUBJETIVO ... 277
4. LA OPCIÓN POR LA LLEVANZA ELECTRÓNICA DE LOS LIBROS REGISTRO ... 279
5. CONTENIDO DE LA INFORMACIÓN A SUMINISTRAR ... 280
6. PLAZOS PARA LA REMISIÓN ELECTRÓNICA DE LAS ANOTACIONES ... 282
7. MODIFICACIÓN DE LAS OBLIGACIONES FORMALES ... 283
8. RÉGIMEN SANCIONADOR ... 285
9. CONCLUSIONES ... 286
ROL Y RÉGIMEN JURÍDICO DE LA PLATAFORMA EN LÍNEA EN EL DISCUSSION DRAFT OF
A DIRECTIVE ON ONLINE INTERMEDIARY PLATFORMS. Adrian Di Pizzo Chiacchio ... 288
1. INTRODUCCIÓN: LA NECESIDAD DE REGULAR LA ACTIVIDAD DE LAS PLATA-FORMAS DIGITALES ... 289
2. EL ROL QUE DESEMPEÑA LA PLATAFORMA DIGITAL ... 291
2.1. La plataforma digital como servicio de la sociedad de la información ... 291
2.2. De la relación bilateral a la relación triangular: ¿quién es qué? ... 293
3. EL (DES)ENCAJE DE LA PLATAFORMA DIGITAL EN LA NORMATIVA DE CONSUMO ACTUAL: ¿NECESITAMOS UNA DIRECTIVA SOBRE PLATAFORMAS EN LÍNEA? ... 294
3.1. Aproximación a la regulación de las plataformas en línea ... 294
3.2. El régimen de las plataformas en línea en la PDPL ... 296
3.2.1. El ámbito de aplicación material y las definiciones preliminares ... 296
3.2.2. Los sistemas de reputación por feedback ... 297
3.2.3. Los deberes de información de la plataforma ... 299
3.2.4. Régimen de responsabilidad de la plataforma ... 301
4. CONCLUSIONES ... 302
5. BIBLIOGRAFÍA ... 303
LEGAL UNCERTAINTY: PROPOSED REGULATION ON ADDRESSING GEO-BLOCKING. Maria Lorena Florez Rojas ... 305
1. INTRODUCTION ... 305
2. DISCRIMINATORY PRACTICES AMONG EUROPEAN UNION ... 307
3. GENERAL PROHIBITION OF NON-DISCRIMINATION ... 310
3.1. Legal Uncertainties ... 311
3.2. Lack of enforcement actions by national authorities ... 312
4. PROPOSED REGULATION ON ADDRESSING GEO-BLOCKING ... 314
4.1. Scope of application ... 315
4.2. Pitfalls of the geo-blocking proposal ... 316
5. CONCLUSIONS ... 318
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 319
ALLOCATING JURISDICTION AND APPLICABLE LAW AFTER GDPR: THE PERSPECTIVE OF OVERALL DAMAGES’ CLAIMS. Maiia Otchenash ... 323
1. INTRODUCTION ... 324
2. ALLOCATING JURISDICTION IN DATA PROTECTION CLAIMS AFTER GDPR ... 326
2.1. The current scope of application of Brussels Recast for online data protection cases and its interaction with the art.79 of GDPR ... 327
2.2. The situation for claiming worldwide damages in online data protection cases after GDPR ... 330
2.2.1. Jurisdictional criteria for online infringements under the Brussels Recast and in the case law of the Court of Justice of European Union (the CJEU) ... 330
2.2.2. The Shevill test and jurisdictional rules in the litigations concerning protection of personal rights ... 332
3. EXTENDED TERRITORIAL SCOPE OF GDPR AND APPLICABLE LAW ... 334
3.1. The role of the main establishment of the data controller in the sense of GDPR’s applicability ... 334
3.2. Non-EU “established” companies who “target” or “monitor” EU data subjects ... 336
3.3. The practical application of “monitoring” after GDPR ... 337
4. UNIVERSAL APPLICATION OF GDPR IN TERMS OF DAMAGES’ CLAIMS ... 338
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS ... 339
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 340
THE PROTECTION OF IP ADDRESSES IN PEER-TO-PEER (P2P) NETWORKS. Dr. Nafiye Yücedağ ... 342
1. INTRODUCTION ... 342
2. THE CHARACTERIZATION OF IP ADDRESSES AS PERSONAL DATA ... 343
2.1. The Differing Positions of Swiss Law and German Law ... 343
2.2. The input of the European Court of Justice ... 345
3. THE LAWFUL PROCESSING OF IP ADDRESSES BY COPYRIGHT HOLDERS ... 347
3.1. The Lawful Processing of Data Made Available to the Public ... 347
3.1.1. General Overview: A Two-Fold Test?... 347
3.1.2. Are IP Addresses Made Available to the Public in P2P Networks? ... 350
3.2. The Overweighting Interest of the Controller... 352
3.2.1. The Balancing Test ... 352
3.2.2. The Balancing Test Applied to the Interest of the Copyright Holder ... 354
4. CONCLUSION ... 356
5. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 357
INTERNET, POLÍTICA Y SOCIEDAD / INTERNET, POLITICS & SOCIETY TOWARDS A MAP-BASED ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH RISK? THE CASE OF THE EQUATORIAL ASIAN HAZE. Anna Berti Suman ... 359
1. THE HAZE CHALLENGE IN EQUATORIAL ASIA ... 359
1.1. The regional scenario ... 360
1.2. Where the danger comes from ... 361
1.3. Impacts of the haze on public health ... 361
1.4. Methodology ... 364
2. THE RESPONSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY ... 365
2.1. The letter from UN special rapporteurs on HRs ... 365
2.2. The claims against the Indonesian Government ... 365
2.3. Human Rights breaches according to the special rapporteurs ... 366
3. THE MAPS, A DIGITAL SOLUTION ... 366
3.1. Mapping tools as a response to the haze ... 366
3.2. Institutional initiatives ... 367
4. DISCUSSION: THE DIGITAL MAPS AS COURT EVIDENCE AND A WARNING FOR
THE GOVERNMENT ... 370
4.1. Maps as authoritative evidence ... 370
4.1.1. The provisions of local legislation for maps against the haze ... 370
4.1.2. A doctrinal opinion on digital (maps) evidence in Singapore ... 372
4.1.3. Case law on digital maps used as evidence of the haze ... 373
4.2. A recent development in the Haze Litigation ... 374
5. CONCLUSION ... 376
6. RECOMMENDATIONS: the multilateral and grassroots approach ... 377
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 377
Benjamí Anglès Juanpere Joan Balcells Padullés Rosa Borge Bravo Ana María Delgado García Mirela Fiori Maria Julià Barceló Alessandro Mantelero Clara Marsan Raventós María José Pifarré de Moner Mònica Vilasau Solana Managing Risk in the Digital Society ha sido el tema central del 13º Congreso
In-ternacional de Internet, Derecho y Política (Barcelona, 29-30 junio 2017) organizado por los Estudios de Derecho y Ciencia Política de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
Desde los años noventa el concepto de sociedad del riesgo ha penetrado con fuerza en muchos ámbitos de las ciencias sociales y las humanidades. Desde el derecho y la ciencia política, la sociedad del riesgo ha sido un concepto que ha vehiculado el aná-lisis de los riesgos inherentes a la sociedad contemporánea y cómo estos son objeto de regulación. Con la irrupción de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comuni-cación se ha producido un cambio profundo en esta sociedad del riesgo. Las TIC están estrechamente relacionadas con el riesgo, ya que estas son tanto generadoras de riesgos como medios para evitarlos. El reto que tenemos ante nosotros es pues el de gestionar los riesgos inherentes a la era digital.
En el momento en que nació el concepto de sociedad del riesgo de la mano de Beck y Giddens, Internet y las TIC se encontraban en un estadio de desarrollo embrionario. Sin embargo, ya entonces se intuía que las TIC serían uno de los campos paradigmáticos en cuanto al aumento de la complejidad de la modernidad. Pasadas tres décadas desde la irrupción de este concepto y de cómo ha permitido el estudio y la gestión del riesgo, se hace necesario abrir un debate profundo sobre el estado actual de la gestión del riesgo en la sociedad digital.
Es necesario, pues, analizar las TIC como generadoras de nuevos riesgos y valorar cómo la sociedad los está afrontando, de la misma manera que es necesario reflexionar sobre cómo las TIC han influido en la percepción y tratamiento de los riesgos socia-les. ¿Qué usos de la tecnología se asocian a determinados riesgos? ¿De qué modo percibe la
y la mejora social? ¿Cómo los prevenimos y quién está legitimado para regularlos y establecer los límites? Estas y otras cuestiones han sido objeto de debate en el seno del Congreso.
El desarrollo general de Internet y la irrupción en concreto de los datos masivos (big data) o del Internet de las cosas han supuesto un paso adelante clave para el desarro-llo de la sociedad en cuestiones como la salud, la seguridad, la calidad de vida, el ahorro de tiempo y energía o el apoderamiento ciudadano que ha supuesto múltiples benefi-cios –grandes y pequeño– a la humanidad. Sin embargo, son numerosos los usos de las TIC que de forma más o menos inmediata pueden plantear conflictos en relación con los derechos fundamentales, como el derecho a la intimidad, el derecho a la libertad de expresión y de información, o incluso nuevos derechos configurados en el seno de esta sociedad del riesgo tecnológica, como el derecho a la autodeterminación informativa.
Cabe preguntarse hasta qué punto los actores privados, principalmente las grandes multinacionales, pueden determinar las nuevas reglas y límites del desarrollo de las TIC. Asistimos a un fenómeno creciente de autorregulación donde determinados sectores fijan los propios códigos de conducta y remiten a arbitrajes la resolución de los posibles conflictos. ¿Se está socavando con estas medidas la legitimidad democrática? ¿Cuál debe ser el límite infranqueable respecto a la autonomía reguladora de los actores privados? ¿Puede el mercado fijar sus propias normas, teniendo en cuenta que en la mayoría de los casos vendrán determinadas por lo que la tecnología permite hacer? Por otra parte, ante estas nuevas percepciones del riesgo, el legislador ha ido expandiendo el derecho penal para dar una respuesta rápida a la gestión de este riesgo minando las garantías hasta aho-ra intrínsecas a los sistemas penales del estado democrático y de derecho.
Una sociedad cada vez más global genera riesgos nuevos que necesitan de una res-puesta política, desde los retos medioambientales hasta la gestión de fenómenos como la migración, el terrorismo o la creciente desigualdad. Asimismo, el mundo digital ha ace-lerado los procesos de transformación política, presionando hacia una sociedad cada vez más interconectada pero a la vez desconectada de sus principales instituciones políticas, lo que plantea nuevos y numerosos interrogantes. Las TIC han abierto espacios públicos que obligan a repensar el monopolio de los actores políticos tradicionales y su relación con el ciudadano. Los medios digitales han fragmentado y revolucionado el panorama de la comunicación más allá de los generadores habituales de opinión pública. Internet ha dado paso a nuevas formas de contestación y protesta más allá de las fronteras físi-cas y ha permitido la articulación de nuevas fuerzas polítifísi-cas que cuestionan el orden establecido. Fenómenos como Wikileaks han puesto de manifiesto la vulnerabilidad del sistema a la hora de retener el secreto y el control de la información. En definitiva, el mundo digital abre nuevos espacios y oportunidades para replantear el orden político actual a la vez que acentúa los riesgos y las incertidumbres.
desde el ámbito académico del derecho y de la ciencia política. Estos bloques son los siguientes: (1) propiedad intelectual, (2) privacidad y protección de datos, (3) comercio electrónico y mercado digital e (4) Internet, política y sociedad.
Aprovechamos estas líneas para manifestar nuestro más sincero agradecimiento tanto a los autores de las comunicaciones como a los revisores de las mismas que han participado en la presente edición y que han contribuido, una vez más, a convertir este Congreso en un foro de referencia internacional.
INTRODUCTION
Managing Risk in the Digital Society has been the central theme of the 13th
Interna-tional Conference on Internet, Law & Politics (Barcelona, 29-30 June 2017) organized by the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
Since the 1990s, the concept of risk society has deeply penetrated many fields of the social sciences and humanities. From law and political science, the Risk Society has been a concept that has channelled the analysis of risks inherent in contemporary society and how they are regulated. With the emergence of the new information and communication technologies there has been a profound change in this risk society. ICT are closely related to risk, as they are both generators of risks and a means of avoiding them. Thus, the challenge facing us is to manage the risks inherent in the digital era.
When the concept of risk society was created by Beck and Giddens, Internet and ICT were in a state of embryonic development. Nevertheless, it was already felt that ICT would be one of the paradigmatic fields in terms of the rising complexity of modernity. Three decades after the appearance of this concept, during which risk has been studied and managed, a wide-ranging debate must be opened on the current state of risk in the digital society.
Therefore, we must analyse ICT as generators of new risks and assess how society is confronting them; just as we must reflect on how ICT have influenced the percep-tion and treatment of social risks. What uses of technology are associated with specific risks? How does society perceive risks, new and traditional? Are risks an opportunity to change and improve society? How do we anticipate them and who is entitled to regulate them and establish their limits? These and other questions have been the object of the debate within the Conference.
and information, and even new rights developed within this technological society of risk, such as the right to informational self-determination.
We must ask how far the private actors, mainly the big multinationals, can deter-mine the new rules and limits of the development of ICT. We are witnessing a growing phenomenon of self-regulation in which specific sectors establish their own codes of conduct and refer the resolution of possible conflicts to arbitration. Is democratic le-gitimacy being undermined by these measures? What should the impassable limit on the regulating autonomy of private actors be? Can the market establish its own rules, bearing in mind that in most cases they will be determined by what technology permits? Furthermore, given these new perceptions of risk, the legislator has been expanding criminal law to give a quick response to managing this risk through guarantees so far intrinsic to the criminal systems of the democratic state and rule of law.
An increasingly more global society generates new risks that need a political res-ponse, from the environmental challenges to the management of phenomena such as migration, terrorism or growing inequality. Moreover, the digital world has accelerated the processes of political transformation, pressuring towards a society that is an ever more interconnected but at the same time disconnected from its main political institu-tions, which poses new and numerous questions. ICT have opened public spaces that oblige us to rethink the monopoly of the traditional political actors and their relations-hip with citizens. The digital media has fragmented and revolutionized the panorama of communication beyond the usual public opinion generators. Internet has given way to new forms of protest beyond physical borders, allowing the articulation of new political forces that question the established order. Phenomena such as Wikileaks have made clear the vulnerability of the system when keeping information secret and under control. In short, the digital world opens new spaces and opportunities to rethink the current political order while highlighting the risks and uncertainties.
AND PROTECT FLEXIBILITY IN COPYRIGHT LAW
Kasper Drążewski Ph.D. Candidate, Law Department, European University Institute, Florence, Italy.
ABSTRACT: The announcement of the proposed changes in EU copyright law came as a cold show-er to all those hoping for signs of a more flexible copyright regime, bettshow-er suited for the digital reality and leaving some headroom for innovation. Sadly, despite the lengthy process and public consulta-tions, with requirements such as that of internet service providers actively policing the Web and its users, it appears that we are all but solidifying the walls around intellectual property, an approach raising controversy regarding its viability and creation of new entry barriers for start-ups, independent coders and creators.
Copyright is unique as it deals with human creativity; and human creativity is both limitless and un-predictable. Now, at a time when the proposals for the EU Copyright Directive are under scrutiny for their conservatism, we might do well to remember what, in the recent past, courts of law have been forced to do when confronted with a regulatory framework too strict to keep in line with the reality of the copyright cases at hand. This paper looks at sample cases of U.S. judges who had to considerably stretch the convenient doctrine of transformative use when it was imposing restrictions upon dealing justice. This is confronted with examples of borderline judicial activism from German, French and Spanish judges in their search for legal means to keep the door open for innovation.
KEYWORDS: overregulation, fair use, copyright flexibility, copyright exceptions, judicial activism 1. INTRODUCTION
The following is a story of the risk of overregulation in copyright law, and how the flexibility of its application has been defended by judges on both sides of the Atlantic, by treating loosely (or stepping outside) a well-grounded doctrine (in the U.S.) and building creative if inconsistent constructs when faced with insufficient latitude within the system of copyright proper (in Europe). Such acts, at times bordering upon judicial activism, should be viewed as symptomatic of an overregulated system of law.
When ruling in favour of digitizing of books for search and accessibility uses in the
Hathitrust case,1 Judge Baer made his famous comment on the value of this contribution
to the progress of science and creative arts being so immense that it could not have been deemed not to constitute fair use. This touched upon a point that has been present in discussions around copyright for a long time: that of adequately balancing copyright protection of existing works, when faced with new creative developments that build on other people’s intellectual property in ways that do not fit within the existing legislative (or doctrinal) framework. The answer to this is usually to apply an individual approach to every case and ensure a level of flexibility to balance the interests involved; in a rigidly regulated system, however, this poses a challenge.
The copyright flexibilities allowed by the U.S. fair use system are not without faults. The system attracts criticism for its vagueness, legal uncertainty and the potential to lead to arbitrary decision-making. To address that, the transformative use doctrine proposed by Pierre Leval2 and picked up by the Supreme Court3 in early 1990s, aimed to bring
or-der into the perceived chaos, shifting the accents in judicial reasoning and attempting to define a clear standard of what fair use really is. Since then, ‘transformativeness’ of crea-tive work has become a major criterion in determining fair use. Interestingly, however, despite criticism for being vague in itself,4 the doctrine –as will be demonstrated– has
also been sidestepped by judges where it proved too rigid and restricting the flexibility guaranteed by law.
From this perspective, the paper then offers a critique of a few analogous cases in Europe to illustrate how European judges pursued a similar position, yet at a greater effort due to the less permitting legislation. Here the challenge required finding a way to preserve a useful invention which did not fit within a rigid legal framework. These efforts, as seemingly going against the letter of the law, could be seen as ju-dicial activism; in any case, the claim is that they were all symptomatic of a system regulated too tightly to allow for new inventions which put the established ways of thinking to the test.
2 Leval, P.N., Toward a Fair Use Standard, 103 Harv. L. Rev. 105, 1105 (1990), p. 1107. 3 Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994).
2. THE ROOTS OF FLEXIBILITY: FAIR USE RULINGS IN THE U.S. 2.1. Flexibility in ‘pre-transformative use’ justifications
The 1976 U.S. Copyright Act, introducing the fair use considerations of today,5
codified a doctrine originating from common law, one long thought necessary to fulfill ‘copyright’s very purpose to promote the progress of science and useful arts’.6
Long before codification, these considerations arose as a framework ensuring a level of judicial latitude for delicate matters of potentially fair uses. In the landmark 1841 pirating case of Folsom v. Marsh,7 Justice Story observed how the question of piracy
often
depended:-upon a nice balance of the comparative use made in one of the materials of the other; the nature, extent, and value of the materials thus used; the objects of each work; and the degree to which each writer may be fairly presumed to have resorted to […] common sources of information, or to have exercised the same common diligence in the selection and arrangement of the materials.
The court noted that a wide interval exists between uses which are clearly infrin-ging and clearly fair, demanding caution in making such assessments. Earlier com-ments at the time observed that such cases demanded caution in examining the nature of the secondary work, the value and extent of the copies, and the injury upon the original authors.8
Folsom v. Marsh is often cited as the first fair use case; given its language, it is more
likely based on (and summarizing) an already existing practice. In doing that, it takes on a similar endeavor as that of Leval; to draw a framework around judicial practice developed in response to a complicated matter where statutory law may only aspire to codify standards coined by judges,9 taking great caution not to restrict them – even if, as
often noted regarding the codification of the fair use factors, such regulations sound too broad to be meaningful without the body of case law behind them.
5 Enumerated by Section 17 of the Copyright Code, these include: examining the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, how much is being taken and the effect upon the potential market.
6 Campbell, quoting the U.S. Constitution.
2.1.1. Even fair use must be applied flexibly: Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises
A memorable case of when the U.S. Supreme Court advocated for flexibility in applying fair use provisions, Harper & Row has its roots in 1977, when, shortly after stepping down, President Gerald Ford made a contract with Harper & Row and Reader’s Digest for the publication of his memoirs, still unwritten at the time. These were anti-cipated due to the expected information about the Watergate scandal and Ford’s par-doning of Nixon; consequently, pre-publication rights were bought by Time Magazine. Unexpectedly, the manuscript was leaked to The Nation, who produced a short piece using material from the manuscript. Time canceled its agreement and the licensees sued for infringement. The court of the first instance ruled for the plaintiffs, on appeal the ru-ling was reversed on grounds of public usability. The Court of Appeals stated that it was not the aim of the law ‘to impede that harvest of knowledge so necessary to a democratic state’ or ‘chill the activities of the press by forbidding a circumscribed use of copyrighted words.’10 This wording was later upheld by the Supreme Court, who nevertheless
re-versed the opinion.11 Quoting the Constitution Copyright Clause about promoting
‘progress of Science and of useful Arts’12 in connection with Sony Corp. of America
v. Universal City Studios, it observed that the purpose of copyright was to serve
as:-a meas:-ans by which as:-an importas:-ant public purpose mas:-ay be as:-achieved. It is intended to motivas:-ate the creative activity of authors and inventors […] and to allow the public access to the products of their genius after the limited period of exclusive control has expired.
It is worth observing that the Clause gets quoted by courts both in judgments finding in favor of fair use and those that do not.13 What is also significant in Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises from the perspective of this analysis, is that the case was
later quoted for the Supreme Court’s flexible approach to fair use itself, by stressing the importance of tailoring of fair use analysis to the particular case.14
10 723 F.2d 195, 205 (1983) at 197, 209.
11 Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985), cit. 6. 12 Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, of the United States Constitution.
2.2. Transformative use: a (vague) remedy to vagueness?
For a criterion so often used in fair use cases, to a lawyer arising from the civil law tradition it may be striking how transformative use is, in fact, not a creation of the lawmaker but found its way into doctrine after a scholarly article.15 In his analysis,
Leval observed that decisions in fair use cases were not governed by consistent prin-ciples; they resembled more ‘intuitive reactions to individual fact patterns’, rendering the system unpredictable. This, he feared, caused the nature and character of fair use to become lost. He argued that it should be seen as a ‘rational, integral part of copyright, whose observance is necessary to achieve the objectives of that law’. The most crucial, he claimed, was the first of the statutory fair use factors, i.e. the purpose and character of the use –coupled with an examination of whether the use is, in fact, ‘transformative’. The term he defined as one encompassing earlier judicial considerations of a use being ‘productive’ in bringing new benefits to the public, but also employing the quoted work in a different manner, or for a different purpose from the original. In other words, the test would be passed by a use that is both productive and serves goals different than those of the original work, by creating ‘new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings’.16
Despite Leval’s effort to keep the founding analysis straightforward, the term ‘transformative use’ was faced with criticism for being too indeterminate to serve a valid purpose in court in the years that followed. As observed by Diane Zimmermann,17 this
has led to cases of disagreements between appellate panels of the same court: one bench would support that finding a ‘transformative purpose’ renders it irrelevant whether the borrowed material is included in a ‘new mode of presentation’ or not’18; another would
claim the exact opposite.19
2.3. Non-paradigm cases: a flexible approach to the doctrine
The following rulings serve as an illustration of the controversies that surrounded the ‘transformative’ doctrine, and, to a degree, continue to this day. They offer a valuable insight into what happens when the judge faces an incompatibility between the doctrine and the flexibility considerations written into law.
15 Leval, Ibid. 16 Leval, Ibid. 17 Zimmermann, Ibid.
18 Referring to Castle Rock, 150 F.3d at 142-43 and Infinity Broad. Corp. v. Kirkwood, 150 F.3d 104, 108 (2d Cir. 1998).
2.3.1. Dr. Seuss v. Penguin Books20
In 1995, Alan Katz and Chris Wrinn created an illustrated book meant as a rhy-ming-verse satire on O.J. Simpson’s murder trial that made a reference to the 1957 novel ‘Cat in the Hat’ by Theodor S. Geisel, published under the pseudonym of Dr. Seuss. Katz and Wrinn’s book, entitled ‘The Cat NOT in the Hat – a Parody’, was published with Penguin Books under the pseudonym of Dr. Juice. It included a drawing of a character wearing a similar hat and made general references to the characteristic style of the original. Sued for breach of copyright, Penguin stated that infringement could not be based on the title of the parody (since, as a matter of statutory construction, titles could not claim statutory copyright); similarly, no claim of ownership could be made on the design of lettering, stylized neologisms and onomatopoeia; if this reasoning were to fail, Penguin claimed a fair use defense on grounds of parody. Still, injunctive relief was granted and the case was appealed.
The Court of Appeals observed that a distinction must be made between a parody (as claimed in the appeal) and satire. This distinction was crucial as the Penguin book did not make an attempt to ridicule the original ‘Cat in the Hat’; au contraire, it merely copied its distinctive style without actually conjuring neither its substance nor its con-tent. As such, the work could not be seen as a parody of the original work as ‘no effort was made to create a transformative work with ‘new expression, meaning, or message’.21
The non-transformative verdict in Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. Penguin Books has been cited as surprising not as much in view of its finding against fair use; it was criticised for stating ‘non-transformativeness’ even though the public was clearly provided ‘with a new or reworked product’.22 This makes the language used in the verdict seem
counterintui-tive. The work in question was made in a way that would seem highly ‘transformative’ by the popular understanding of the word; there also was clearly no market substitution. Being a satire and not a parody, the work had failed to satisfy the first statutory fair use factor and thus, the fair use exception could not be claimed. Still, the court chose to ad-dress the ‘transformative’ aspect and find against it. The case shows an interesting dyna-mic between the statutory considerations and the ‘transformative use’ doctrine. On the one hand, the doctrine had become so embedded in the judiciary practice that the court would fret to openly reject it; on the other, the ruling is firmly rooted in the flexibility ensured by the law and, in a less than transparent way, dismissed the doctrine which, though intended to introduce greater legal certainty, proved overly rigid in this case.
20 Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. v. Penguin Books USA, Inc., 109 F.3d 1394 (9th Cir. 1997). 21 Dr Seuss, Ibid.
2.3.2. AP v. Meltwater23
A more recent case to demonstrate the vagueness of the ‘transformative use’ term and its even looser application, the 2013 Associated Press v. Meltwater was a copyright dispute a news-monitoring service offered by Meltwater since 2005. Meltwater indexed and scraped news stories off the Web and sent daily snippets to its subscribers, matched to their pdefined search queries. It also allowed real-time ad hoc searches, with re-sults also offered as snippets. Every matched article was labeled identifying the article’s source, such as the publisher and country of origin, and contained two snippets: a 300 character-long opening of the article, and then a 140-character line of text with the highlighted search phrase that triggered the match. The user could then click the pro-vided link to be transferred to the original material. Where the original material had been already removed, the result would be that of following a broken or outdated link. Associated Press felt it infringed copyright in the materials in question and filed suit. Meltwater argued that their use was transformative, using content for a new purpose, as an ‘information-location’ tool.
The SDNY court observed that AP’s business model included licensing of access to the news stories it created; including licensing to entities offering a similar snippet functionality as that of Meltwater. It noted that Meltwater had been marketing its servi-ce as one to traservi-ce and monitor media coverage and to stay informed on current events; it also observed that the Meltwater service had been described as allowing ‘not to read the whole article’ and thus saving time.24
In the fair use analysis, the court cited Infinity Broadcast to say that ‘use of co-pyrighted material that merely repackages or republishes the original is unlikely to be deemed a fair use’ and a ‘change of format, though useful’ is not transformative.25 Then,
quoting Leval, it made a point about the original material being used as ‘raw material, transformed in the creation of new information, new aesthetics, new insights and un-derstandings’. On this basis, the court found the use as non-transformative, by using computer programs to ‘automatically capture and republish designated segments of text from news articles, without adding any commentary or insight in its News Reports.’26
The court had refused to consider Meltwater a search engine; on the contrary, due to its marketing which had made references to substituting the original material, it was considered to have built a business model around ‘consistent copying of creative
expres-23 The Associated Press v. Meltwater U.S. Holdings, Inc. et al, No. 1:2012cv01087 - D 156 (S.D.N.Y. 2013)
24 Meltwater, p. 10.
sion’ that was not transformative. Meltwater was found to make money directly from ‘undiluted use’ of protected material, conveying an intent of serving as a substitute for AP’s news service. The court ended on a strong note that ‘permitting Meltwater to take the fruit of AP’s labor for its own profit, without compensating AP, injures AP’s ability to perform this essential function of democracy’.
The AP position and the SDNY ruling has met with criticism on many levels. In its amicus curiae brief of 2013, the Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized AP’s approach citing a multitude of cases where transformative use has been defined in favor of electro-nic search services; some authors noted the court had become unnecessarily focused on matters of competition, since AP had been licensing access to companies offering news monitoring and snippet view; others addressed the brusque manner the court displayed towards transformative use, despite strong similarities to other content indexing/snip-pet view applications. The fact that the use of source material had clearly served a new purpose and offered a range of possibilities with hardly any market substitution did not sway the court in its highly flexible approach to the transformative use doctrine.
2.4. Looking for flexibility without fair use: examples of European copyright cases
2.4.1. Vorschaubilder I27
A strong example of a case where a circumscribed legal framework forced the court to improvise in view of the lack of a suitable exception in the law, the 2010
Vorschau-bilder I case argued before the German Federal Supreme Court pertained to the use of
thumbnail pictures by Google in its search results. The functionality pertained to using an automated service for making and storing smaller-sized copies of images found on websites (thumbnails of approx. 100x150 pixels, yet ‘retaining the essential creative fea-tures’), without permission of the copyright holders, and using them in the course of commercial activity. By doing so, Google violated § 15.2.2 of the Author’s Law (UrhG) in connection with § 19a which secures the exclusive right to make one’s works accessi-ble to the public, at a time and place individually chosen.28
The plaintiff was a visual artist, running a website containing pictures of her works since 2003. In 2005, she entered her name into Google and was presented with search results involving thumbnail pictures created using her own art presented on her website. Seeing this as a copyright infringement, the plaintiff sought injunctive
relief in court, seeking prohibition of reproduction, publication and modification of her copyrighted work.
Google stated that the use of the images fell under copyright exemptions for tran-sient or incidental reproduction of no economic significance (§44a of the UrhG) –and even if it was not found to be the case, the plaintiff had herself put the images on the Web by publishing them on her website which signified an ‘implicit acquiescence’ for the images to be accessed and processed by search services. Moreover, the website had undergone a search engine optimization to ‘lure’ search engines to it by inclusion of cha-racteristic ‘meta’ elements also influencing the behavior of the search function. The case was dismissed in the first instance and again on appeal,29 then submitted to the Federal
Supreme Court for review.
The Jena Court of Appeals (Oberlandgericht) observed that the pictures were indeed protected works of art whose digitalization did not deprive them of protection, and that including them in search results may have infringed the right to make them available to the public as mentioned in § 19a in connection with § 15, subsec. 2, item 2 of the UrhG. Nevertheless, creation and use of thumbnails constituted a transformation of the original work which required consent by the author of the primary work under §23 UrhG, and this consent had not been granted. The court noted that shrunken versions of the images did not qualify as quotation; similarly, Google’s ‘transient or incidental reproduction of no economic significance’ defense of § 44a was rejected, as the use of thumbnails was of a lasting nature with continuous earning opportunities, e.g. from advertising. Lastly, implied consent could not be claimed on the basis of just posting images on a website without protective measures. However, an injunction against the search engine operator would be considered an ‘abuse of rights’ citing § 242 BGB. This abuse was seen in the contradictory behavior of the plaintiff: the artist had optimized the source code on her website to attract automated content-analyzing services, and then opposed a ‘customary process’ of the services in question in reference to transforming her content into thumbnails. On these grounds, revision of the judgment was refused.
On final appeal, the Bundesgerischtshof affirmed that the defendant had interfered with the exclusive right of the applicant to exploit their works in tangible form (§ 15 Abs. 1 UrhG). The digital images on the plaintiff’s website constituted ‘physical fixations’ of her paintings and copies within the meaning of the UrhG. The thumbnail pictures reduced the works in size, but without any ‘essential changes’, thus remained identical to the original works. In this regard, the court observed, even further reaching transfor-mations that would still be devoid of their ‘own creative expression’, would still be con-sidered a remodeling of the original work and thus still falling under the same category
due to lack of originality and the ‘matching overall impression’ (übereinstimmender Gesamteindruck). The court then noted that, by storing thumbnails independently of their source, and controlling their availability through its services, Google met the crite-ria of § 19a (making them publicly available). The fact that an Internet user first needed to enter a search phrase for the thumbnails to be retrieved and displayed did not change the fact that the use was effected and controlled by the defendant. The court also ruled out the application of copyright exceptions for standalone work created through free use of another person’s work which would have been allowed under § 24 UrhG. Merely by virtue of shrinking an image, yet retaining the essential creative properties of the origi-nal, it could not be claimed that a transformation had been created.
Nevertheless, the court observed, the defendant’s action was not illegal, due to consent of the plaintiff, despite no declaration of intent (Willenserklärung) to this effect. This was contrary to the earlier view of the court of appeals, stating that such a consent would need to meet criteria as are generally considered under the applicable doctrine. Here, the Supreme Court decided the defendant could assume that implied consent had been issued to the processing of the works by a search engine.
The case is notable for the innovation-friendly attitude by the courts –and a com-mendable dedication to finding a legal solution amidst regulations of statutory law which clearly lacked the flexibility to leave room for situations precisely like the one in question. The BGH had chosen to rest its decision on an ‘implied consent’ construct that made the tacit assumption of there being an ‘opt-out’ model with Google’s search functions. This rather weak construct aside, the ruling is an extensive list of legal provi-sions that demonstrate how a legalist approach would have led to the case being resolved against Google and its image search service. The ‘judicial resourcefulness’ in coming up with the solution has been noted, yet with a grain of salt: as commented by Paul Hugenholz and Martin Senftleben, it was symptomatic of a legal system that lacked an appropriate escape valve, as flexibility ‘should ideally be found inside the system of copyright proper’.30
2.4.2. Vorschaubilder II31
A year after the first Vorschaubilder case, another of a related nature was decided by the Bundesgerischtshof. The decision shows the court taking further its earlier line of reasoning (and further expanding its definition of consent).
30 Hugenholtz, P. Bernt and Senftleben, Martin, Fair Use in Europe: In Search of Flexibilities (February 29, 2012). Amsterdam Law School Research Paper No. 2012-39
The plaintiff was a photographer who had, at one point, done a photoshoot of the TV anchor Collien Fernandes. These photos were then licensed to a number of online services. At one point, the photographer discovered, using the Google Image Search function, that those pictures were featured on two websites without his permission and that thumbnails of his pictures were displayed by Google as links leading to those in-fringing websites. This use of his copyrighted work by Google he considered an infrin-gement in itself and filed for an injunctive relief prohibiting Google from displaying his works as thumbnails to the German public in its search results. He also demanded that Google be obliged to provide information on the extent of the unauthorized use of his photographs and that it reimbursed both his legal fees and his estimated loss due to the said unauthorized use.
The case was ruled in favor of the plaintiff before the district court, but reversed on appeal. The case then reached the Bundesgerichtshof which examined it against the background of the earlier Vorschaubilder I ruling. It noted again that illegality is ruled out when copyrighted property is being put on display on the Internet without protective measures. As the court observed, the plaintiff had, in the past, licensed the online display of the images to third-party websites. Thus, he had granted ‘effective consent’ (wirksame Einwilligung) to them being used as thumbnail pictures, not li-mited to the display of images put online with the author’s consent. The court obser-ved that search engines used automated processes which did not distinguish between images published by an authorized party and those lacking authorization. Once the images are published, the court reasoned, the search engine operator ‘can and may’ assume a consent that encompasses display of thumbnails also in regard to copies which have been put online without consent of the author. The author is, nonethe-less, entitled to bring claims against parties who conduct unauthorized publication of his images.
2.4.3. SAIF v. Google Inc. and Google France32
One of Google Books’ legal adventures in Europe, the case of La Société des Auteurs
des arts visuels et de L’Image Fixe (SAIF) against Google France is an example of courts
actively looking for a way to save a new technological solution that was clearly beneficial to the public. This was done in the face of an overwhelmingly precise legislation which, taking the legalist approach, would leave little doubt as to ruling in favor of shutting the project down.
In 2005, SAIF filed suit before the Tribunal de grande instance (TGI) against Goo-gle Inc. and its local subsidiary GooGoo-gle France for infringement by reproducing and offe-ring Internet users the viewing of ‘thousands of works’ belonging to its repertoire and without its permission. This violated the provisions of Articles L 122-4, prohibiting any full or partial reproduction,33 and L 335-2 of the French Code of intellectual property,
setting forth a rigid definition of counterfeit works.34 The plaintiffs also demanded EUR
50,000 in damages, 60,000 in legal fees and EUR 80,000,000 as ‘restorative compen-sation’. Google was to be banned from further reproduction of images as thumbnails unless an agreement were to be executed to this end with SAIF. Google countered that French law should not apply due to the location of its servers, and that the Paris court should review the case under American federal copyright law, in particular its fair use provisions. Google invoked Article 5.2 of the Berne Convention, stating that the extent of protection, as well as the means of redress, shall be governed exclusively by the laws of the country where protection is claimed. This country, according to Google, was the United States. Alternatively, it claimed that the said search services did not affect ‘normal exploitation of the works of authors’.
The TGI agreed that Google’s search services were hosted in Mountain View, Cali-fornia. Google France was found to be unrelated to the operation of the search engine; it is Google Inc. that ‘controls, manages and makes all decisions regarding search engine activity that represents the heart of its business’. The action against Google France was thus dismissed. The court then ruled on the basis of Article 5.2 of the Berne Convention that the country where protection is sought is ‘not necessarily that of the court hearing but that of the country where the event occurred, and where the damage is suffered’.
32 Cour d’Appel de Paris, Pôle 5 - Chambre 1, Arrêt du 26 janvier 2011, http://juriscom.net/2011/01/ ca-paris-26-janvier-2011-saif-c-google/.
33 Under Article L 122-4, any full or partial representation or reproduction made without the consent of the author or his successors or assigns is deemed unlawful.
Citing an interpretation offered in recent cases,35 the court chose to apply the law of the
U.S. on the grounds of the location of the servers and the registered office of Google in California. On this basis, the court applied the fair use provisions of the 1976 Copyright Act and found in favour of fair use.
By the time the Cour d’Appel (CA) overturned the ruling on appeal in 2011, it had already been widely criticized in the legal scholarship as referring back to applying the domicile law of the infringer and disregarding the law of the jurisdiction where the infringement was committed, the harm was done and protection was being sought. This would lead to a disjunction between the law of the jurisdiction where the infringement was committed and that applied to the claim; it would also go against the intention of the Berne Convention to ensure the most uniform protection of authors.36 If upheld,
this would constitute a gateway to forum-shopping by allowing infringers to escape liability by establishing their businesses and server rooms in exotic locations without adequate protection of intellectual property.37
The court noted how the services were intentionally made available to the French public via a *.fr domain. France was thus considered as by far more related to the case and French law needed to be applied. Delving deeper into the nature of creation of thumbnails, the court noted that search results are displayed via a cache or buffer me-mory and that this function allows access to images for a few days or weeks after the original has ceased to exist. The storage of thumbnails is thus conducted over a certain period, but still is temporary. This function, the court reasoned, indicates therefore a ‘transitory’ nature involving a temporary reproduction for speeding up the flow of infor-mation and constitutes an ‘integral and essential’ part of an image search engine. Offe-ring clickable thumbnails is not exerting control over legal content; the search function provider is thus a neutral link between the user and the website operator; a passive intermediary. On this basis, the court noted that the role of Google qualifies as ‘purely technical, automatic and passive’ and this its service, which boils down to content inde-xing posted on the Internet by third parties and automatic, intermediate and transient storage of the information transmitted which is regulated in Article L. 32-3-4 of the Loi
35 SISRO v. Ampersand Software BV, 5 March 2002, JCP II 10082; Lamore v. Universal City Studios, 30 January 2007, 212 RIDA 261.
36 Thus eg. Ginsburg, J.C., Treppoz, E., International Copyright Law: U.S. and E.U. Perspectives: Text and Cases, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015, p. 653; see also Stamatoudi, I., Torremans, P., EU Copyright Law: A Commentary, Google Books DRM Edition, May 30, 2014, p. 1052. 37 The TGI did not continue this line of interpretation and in the next case involving a conflict
du 21 juin 2004 pour la confiance dans l’économie numérique (LCEN), implementing the
e-Commerce Directive 2000/31/EC.38 Thus, all claims of SAIF were dismissed.
It is noteworthy how the court had found a way to exonerate Google on the basis of a regime liability for passive service providers with no knowledge or control over the processed content. However, reaching out to the e-Commerce directive to reduce Google’s role to a ‘passive-only’ Internet service provider, while certainly praiseworthy, is also legally weak. The assumption of a ‘transient’ nature of reproduction has been rejected in the German cases; also the ‘lack of control’ over displayed content by Google could be up for debate. But even leaving the ECD qualification aside, the fact remains that the case of SAIF v Google, a copyright case by its nature, was decided based on rules on e-commerce, rather than copyright law. The lack of a copyright argument may be most easily explained looking at the rather desperate (and short-lived) forum-shopping concept as offered by the TGI earlier; the simple fact is that French copyright law did not allow for such acts of reproduction as conducted by Google Image Search, and no sustainable reasoning could be built by the court to give Google a free pass.
2.4.4. Megakini v. Google39
As another example of the court venturing beyond the copyright statute, April 2012 saw the end of a case argued before the Spanish Supreme Court, concerning ca-ching of websites and displaying snippets of text in search results. The plaintiff, Megaki-ni.com, had claimed copyright infringement and sued Google Spain demanding that it be prohibited from further operation of a search engine.
The court of first instance applied a construct of non-abuse of rights and presumed consent not unlike that used by the German courts, stating that the reproduction of mi-nor parts of the page was temporary and provisional,40 and necessary for the operation of
search engines. Moreover, the caching of the entire site was seen as falling under ‘proxy caching’ by ISP’s41 under the implementation of the e-Commerce Directive as was later
applied by the CA in Paris.42
38 Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (‘Directive on electronic commerce’) Official Journal L 178 , 17/07/2000 P. 0001 – 0016. 39 Sentencia n.172/2012, of 3 April 2012, Supreme Court, Civil Chamber.
40 Article 31.1 Texto Refundido de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual (TRLPI), implementing Article 5.1. of the e-Commerce Directive.
41 Article 15 Ley de Servicios de la Sociedad de la Información (LSSICE) implementing Article Art. 13 e-Commerce Directive.
On appeal, the Provincial Court in Barcelona also ruled against the plaintiff, albeit on different grounds.43 While agreeing that the search results displaying fragments of
text were of minimal and incidental nature, it did strike down the construct offered un-der the e-Commerce regime for passive service proviun-ders as Google was not, after all, an access provider. It also noted that Google could not benefit from a safe harbor releasing search engines of liability for linking to infringing content44 since it was its own act of
infringement that was being discussed. The court of appeal did, however, offer an ex-tensive argument why Google’s actions did not constitute an infringement. Noting that the TRLPI featured a closed list of exceptions, the court applied a construal of Article 40a TRLPI, (introducing the Berne restrictions on unreasonably prejudicing legitimate rights of the author and normal exploitation of the work) stating that it could also be interpreted in a positive manner, by application to limiting the author’s rights, relating it to the concept of harmless use of movable property of third parties (usus inocui). The court also noted that the Anglo-Saxon fair use doctrine should be taken into account as guidance that the author’s rights are not of absolute nature.
The Supreme Court generally agreed with these findings, noting that in situa-tions not covered explicitly by statutory law, a judge must defer to applying general principles of the law, such as that of good faith and prohibition of abuse of rights,45
in the context of the constitutional principle of property not being an absolute right. The Court also made a reference to the nature of the plaintiff’s claim, aimed more at harming Google rather than protecting a legitimate right, which should not prevail on general principles despite the situation not falling within the exceptions allowed by Spanish copyright law. Lastly, the court made an express reservation that the ruling only applies to the given case.
From the perspective of this analysis, the dismissal of the e-Commerce safe harbor cannot be found surprising and it further undermines the findings of the CA in the French case. Similarly, the narrowness of the safe harbor under Art. 17 LSSICE preclu-des its applicability in a case where linking may be considered copyright infringement. This has been commented upon with some concern, pointing that the German presu-med consent may, after all, be a more reliable solution.46 While the general good faith
and non-abuse of rights approach has earned praise as opening the door to a measure of
43 Sentencia de la Audiencia Provincial de Barcelona (Section 15), of 17 September 17, 2008. 44 Article 17 LSSICE.
45 Articles 7.1 and 7.2 of the Spanish Civil Code.
flexibility under the European copyright regime,47 others have noted that the construct
it upheld had, in fact, created a new flexible exception despite other rulings in Europe noting that it is not the court’s role to do that.48
3. SUMMARY
In the American context, judicial flexibility has been applied and advocated since the dawn of fair use appearing in case law, over a century before its introduction into statutory law. As demonstrated, this sometimes leads to interesting tensions between statutory fair use and the transformative use doctrine established, with the aid of the Supreme Court, in early 1990’s. In the U.S. cases presented here, the ‘transformative’ parameter of the work was not really of any use (and, particularly in Dr Seuss, it became a burden on the courts in a case otherwise easily resolved under statutory considera-tions). This demonstrates how, despite its popularity and value as a standard intended to bring a solid base into the perceived unpredictability of fair use cases, judges were only willing to accept it as far as it did not restrict the flexibility under the original statutory considerations.
Even more interestingly from a civil law perspective, it has been demonstrated how this very flexibility is desired and sought for by European judges in cases pertaining to digital innovation occurring at the expense of copyright protection. With the approach taken by the Spanish courts arguably being the boldest and potentially the most robust, the reasoning offered in the cited cases of Germany and France shows how, faced with a law too rigid to accommodate such innovation, judges were forced to display con-siderable creativity –and how, while undoubtedly resourceful, still questionable (and seemingly unsustainable) the resulting legal constructs were.
47 Ibid, p. 5; see also Javier Martínez de Aguirre, El caso “Megakini vs. Google› o la excesiva rigidez de nuestra Ley de Propiedad Intelectual, PropiedadIntelectualHoy.com.
4. BIBLIOGRAPHY Books, articles and press releases
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Laws
Code de la propriété intellectuelle, loi no 92-597 du 1er juillet 1992 relative au code de la propriété intellectuelle, publié au Journal officiel du 3 juillet 1992, Article L122-5.
Copyright Act of 1976 – An Act for the general revision of the Copyright Law, title 17 of the United States Code, and for other purposes, Pub.L. 94–553
