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A lawsuit between music producer Frank Peterson and YouTube (and Google) that has been ongoing since 2009 did not come to an end today. The German Federal Court of Justice (FCJ) decided to stay the proceedings and refer several questions to the CJEU, regarding (once again) the question of platform liability and the right of communication to the public . the new YouTube logo Peterson is seeking damages from YouTube and Google because videos containing recordings of German singer Sarah Brightman were available on YouTube, even after Peterson had asked the platform to remove all such content. Both the Regional Court of Hamburg and the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg rejected Peterson’s claims, arguing that YouTube did not commit acts of communication to the public and was protected by Art. 10 TMG (the German Telemedia Act, which implements Art. 14 of the E-Commerce-Directive). The FCJ now referred the following questions to the CJEU (case No. I ZR 140/15) [ please note that this is a Ka...

Just when you think all has been said about linking , framing and communication to the public , another judgment shows up and proves you wrong. This time, a legal dispute between the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB = ”German Digital Library”, the German content provider for Europeana ) and the Verwertungsgesellschaft Bild-Kunst (VG Bild-Kunst), a German collecting society for visual artists, gave the Higher Regional Court of Berlin the chance to further clarify what constitutes a communication to the public, and what does not. Cat with kittens, as seen on Europeana Factual and legal background The dispute arose from contractual negotiations between the parties. DDB hosts images (previews at a resolution of 800x600 pixels) on its website, some of which were created by members of VG Bild-Kunst (less than 1% of the images on DDB belong to VG Bild-Kunst’s members, according to DDB). The full versions of the images are stored on external websites of DDB’s suppliers and can be accessed f...