Wednesday 21 June 2017

Online Filesharing Platform Is Making Available To The Public

ECJ C-610/15


The European Court of Justice decided that the making available and the provision of an online file-sharing platform (here "The Pirate Bay") is effectively an act of "making available" of the works in accordance with the copyright directive 2001/29/EC.

The files uploaded by users of the platform for file-sharing reasons are predominantly copyright protected works, the sharing of which the rights holders did not permit the platform suppliers or the users of the platform.
Article 3 section 1 of the EC directive expressly includes in the right of the creator of a work to decide about the communication of his work to the public the right to decide about the making available of the work to the public. The Court found that even though the respective works were uploaded by the users of the online file-sharing platform, the supplier of the platform intentionally played a decisive role in the making available of the works.