Do I as a European Union citizen have the right to watch TV shows outside my country and download in my country? In the UK, it is possible to download TV shows in the UK and watch them afterwards outside the UK. http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/tv/watch_outside_uk I would like to know if this is based on EU regulations or just UK regulations. If it is based on EU regulations, it should be possible in other EU countries as well.
The BBC iPlayer restrictions are not, as far as I'm aware, based on regulations; they are based on licensing agreements (in fact, the page you link to says this explicitly). Whether the same is true of programs from other services in other countries--or even other services in the UK--is going to depend on the contracts between those services and you and the contracts between those services and their content providers.
This will ultimately depend on the specific laws, but the scope of EU laws like Directive 2006/114/EC is generally restricted to the EU Single Market. Thus, we would have to consider whether the advertisement in question is directed at that market. In your scenario, you have two US-based companies that engage in comparative advertising via an US-based platform. But where these companies are headquartered is not directly relevant, as non-EU companies can participate in the EU Single Market as well. Instead, EU rules are applicable if either: the comparative advertising occurred in the context of the activities of an EU establishment such as an EU-based subsidiary; or the advertising was directed to a country in the EU Single Market, for example by fulfilling the criteria listed in the Pammer and Alpenhof cases. For example, lets assume that the companies do not have a direct EU presence, but that they offer goods or services to consumers in the EU and the comparative advertisement was in German and mentioned prices in Euros. If so, there would be a good argument that EU rules apply and that the comparative advertising was potentially illegal. But as another example, lets consider two restaurants/diners in Memphis, Tennessee, US, that made unfair comparative advertisements which were distributed via YouTube. It is possible to view the advertisement from the EU. But is there any reason for this ad to be illegal in the EU? No. This ad falls out of scope of EU law as the ad is not directed towards the EU Single Market, and it is unlikely to mislead consumers in the sense of fair competition laws as there won't be any potential customers for the Memphis restaurant in the EU. National laws could take a more narrow approach though. Does YouTube have any responsibility here? No, fair competition laws generally only address the competitors, not the platforms through which advertisements are distributed (e.g. newspapers or social media platforms). Online platforms with user-generated consent benefit from safe-harbor laws. However, there are some legal theories such as the German Störerhaftung under which it might be possible to hold an otherwise-privileged service provider responsible for acts committed by an unknown third party. Note that while comparative marketing is quite regulated in the EU and thus rare, it is not actually illegal when done fairly. For example in Germany, § 6 UWG defines criteria to determine whether comparative advertising is unfair.
My understanding is such: It doesn't matter where the company is incorporated (e.g. incorporated in the US = &quot;American company&quot;). It matters where the company does business. Companies must comply with the law in ALL countries that they do business in. Facebook does business in the UK, so they must comply with UK regulations, including those by the CMA, just like any other UK company. So, what can Facebook do? Comply Appeal Ignore and face legal penalties (fines, suspension of ability to do business in the UK, seizure of UK assets, etc.) Stop doing business in the UK (e.g. see Google News leaving Spain over their news aggregation law).
If fish were caught in international waters, should we consider its origin as the closest country or the ship's flag? Neither. The rules in the united-kingdom (which is no longer in the EU, but I assume they are comparable as they have not been substantially changed since leaving) are: Fish caught at sea You must label all fish caught at sea with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) catch area. You must also label fish caught in the Northeast Atlantic, Mediterranean or Black Sea with: the name of the FAO sub-area or division a map or pictogram of the catch area
In ABC v Aereo 573 U. S. ____ (2014), the US Supreme Court held that activity almost identical to what you describe is copyright infringement. Respondent Aereo, Inc., sells a service that allows its subscribers to watch television programs over the Internet at about the same time as the programs are broadcast over the air. When a subscriber wants to watch a show that is currently airing, he selects the show from a menu on Aereo’s website. Aereo’s system, which consists of thousands of small antennas and other equipment housed in a centralized warehouse, responds roughly as follows: A server tunes an antenna, which is dedicated to the use of one subscriber alone, to the broadcast carrying the selected show. A transcoder translates the signals received by the antenna into data that can be transmitted over the Internet. A server saves the data in a subscriber-specific folder on Aereo’s hard drive and begins streaming the show to the subscriber’s screen once several seconds of programming have been saved. The streaming continues, a few seconds behind the over-the-air broadcast, until the subscriber has received the entire show. We must decide whether respondent Aereo, Inc., infringes [copyright] by selling its subscribers a technologically complex service that allows them to watch television programs over the Internet at about the same time as the programs are broadcast over the air. We conclude that it does. A nicer summary, oral argument transcript and audio are available from the Oyez Project. In my opinion, your example is more clearly an infringement of copyright than Aereo's. Aereo dedicated separate antennae to receive a signals for each subscriber at the subscriber's direction, and rebroadcast the signal over the internet in near real-time. This let them argue two things: 1) that they were not performing the work, only letting other people perform it, and 2) that the performance was not &quot;to the public&quot;. In your example, the server is receiving and saving the broadcast, and then later, that single copy is being reproduced and transmitted to whomever requests it. That would certainly be considered both reproduction and performance to the public.
The video in some ways belongs to YouTube. Although it's a royalty free one, they have rights to the video, and you ARE using THEIR service, this means that you have to follow their terms of use. It's best to get an offline copy from the content creator. Source: YouTube Terms of use section 6C For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in video Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your videos from the Service. You understand and agree, however, that YouTube may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of your videos that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in user comments you submit are perpetual and irrevocable.
Yes, this is a viable option. And no, it doesn't need to be perfect. The use of such a filter is a technical means, but it also serves to communicate that Small Town News explicitly does not envisage to provide service to Europeans or others resident in the EU. If a user chooses to use a VPN to do visit Small Town News webpages, it's reasonable to expect that this would be comparable to buying the Small Town News paper in print while physically in the USA. It's a common principle that courts have to decide on jurisdiction, and actions of a party can factor in this decision.
You are framing it wrong. It is not that "they have put a barrier" to public domain information, it is that they have added an additional source of that information. The new source has a barrier, yes, but that does not prevent you from accessing the same information elsewhere. If you own a copy of some public domain data, you are not allowed to prevent other users from accessing other copies (by claiming copyright infringement or the like); you cannot even prevent people from doing copies from the copies you did provide them. But you are not forced to allow other users to access your copy. Consider the logical conclusion if that were the law. The moment that you downloaded some public domain file into your computer, you would be forced to give access to your hard disk from the internet, isn't it? Would you need to leave your home door open if you happened to have a printed copy of the text there? Of course, there is a need to discriminate between "public domain" (without licence) and "not public domain but open licence" (BSD, CC, GPL, etc.). In the later case the licence could be tailored so that the work could appear in archive.org but that it would be illegal to provide it with the business model of Academia.edu1. But that would be possible only for works not in the public domain. 1 To be decided by a judge on the basis of the wording of the licence and jurisdiction.