European Court of Justice: embedding is not copyright infringement

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) delivered an important ruling last week stating that embedding copyrighted videos on a third party website is not copyright infringement.

This includes instances when the video source was uploaded without permission.

Whilst the case has important implications for media companies it had, as reported by Torrentfreak, nothing to do with music or with large media conglomerates: the fight was between the water filtering company BestWater International and two men who worked as agents for a competitor. The two had embedded a BestWater video onto their website.

The case was referred to the ECJ by a German court because European law was not clear on this matter. The court ruled that the embedding of a file or video is not in breach of copyright under EU law as long as it is not altered or communicated to a new public. Having a video up on YouTube essentially means you’re communicating it with the world and so simply embedding it on a third party site would not constitute infringement.

ECJ rulings is important because all EU member states are bound by its decisions, so if a similar dispute was to come up in the UK the courts would be bound to this case as precedent and would apply the same principles.

On top of being the verdict that makes the most sense, there could have also been a policy reason around the ECJ’s decision. Had the court found that embedding was violating copyright, how would the justice system across Europe have dealt with the tens of thousands of claims that would have been initiated as a result of its decision?

Sites large and small makeing extensive use of video embedding (including news organisations and click-friendly sites like Buzzfeed) can sleep a little easier tonight.


(Andrea Leonelli)