Streaming is not exempt from copyright rules - ECJ opinion

A couple of days ago, the European Court of Justice handed down an opinion that is likely to have far reaching impact, legally, further down the line, on streaming.

Hitherto both the UK Supreme Court and ECJ had come down on the side that while downloading and copying copyrighted material is illegal, streaming was legal. This 26th April 2017 ruling, though seemingly obiter (because the case is about sales of "fully-loaded kodi boxes"), has changed that. The critical opinion is the following:

"The Court also finds that temporary acts of reproduction, on that multimedia player, of a copyright protected work obtained by streaming on a website belonging to a third party offering that work without the consent of the copyright holder, cannot be exempted from the right of reproduction."

I expect this will increase the adoption of vpn over time, which therefore has implication on the choice of broadband services, and hardware (for router and/or iptv e.g.) today.

A summary is at http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2017-04/cp170040en.pdf

The opinion in full is at http://curia.europa.eu/juris/docume...=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=709459
 
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