Opinion AG CJEU: Online recording service where the provider receives and records the signal breaches InfoSoc Directive
02-10-2017 Print this page
Case C-265/16: VCAST v RTI. Opinion AG Szpunar.
Opinion about whether reproduction in the cloud is still made ‘by’ the beneficiary of the private copying exception, as required by the legislation. VCAST provides its users with a cloud recording system for free-to-air terrestrial programmes broadcast by Italian television organisations, including RTI. In practice, the user selects a programme on the VCAST website, which includes all the programming from the television channels covered by the service. The system operated by VCAST then picks up the television signal using its own antennas and records the time slot for the selected programme in the cloud data storage space indicated by the user. That storage space is not provided by VCAST but by third-party providers. The recorded audiovisual data are then made available to the user on the conditions specified by the storage service provider.
AG Szpunar proposes the Court answers the questions of the Tribunale di Torino (District Court, Turin, Italy) as follows:
Article 5(2)(b) of Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society must be interpreted as precluding national legislation which permits the activity of providing, without the copyright holders’ consent, an online recording service for terrestrial television programmes which are freely accessible in the territory of that Member State, where it is the provider of the service, and not its user, that receives the terrestrial broadcasting signal from which the recording is made.
