Key Points:
The Court found that mere act of browsing websites will
not infringe copyright by reason of copies of works being created
by the automatic computer processes involved.
Any time you view a page on the web – such as this one
– you're calling into existence multiple copies of the
page as it hops from the original server, through routers and proxy
servers, and onto your device. To make it quicker to see the page
again, your browser will usually make a copy too, which will stay
in your browser cache until you clear the cache, or it's
overwritten by subsequent downloads.
Does this infringe copyright? After 20 years of the worldwide
web, this was, perhaps surprisingly, still a live question. The
European Court of Justice's recent decision in Public Relation
Consultants Association Ltd v Newspaper Licensing Agency Ltd
(ECLI:EU:C:2014:910) has made it clear that, in the European Union
at least, this basic feature of the web doesn't need a licence
from every
