To clarify this, we should view the research question in the context of European Union (EU) and UK copyright law.īefore joining the EU, the UK had developed its own criterion of judging whether the reproduction right is infringed. However, the second characteristic of streaming complicates the problem. The first characteristic suggests that copies of the film exist in the buffer, even though they are transient. During streaming, two important dimensions are worth noting: (a) to play the film smoothly, one-fifth of it will be loaded into the device buffer (b) the data packets will be automatically deleted from the buffer once end users stop streaming the film (Foley, 2010, p.
In general, streaming can be divided into two categories: interactive streaming and noninteractive streaming. To this end, the first question we put forward in this article is whether the reproduction of copyright-protected work takes place during streaming.
However, this feature of streaming raises a crucial question: whether streaming films from unlicensed internet sites infringe the reproduction right of right holders. Unlike downloading, streaming allows users to watch movies online instead of making a permanent copy of the movies on devices.
Although it is impractical for right holders to sue all the people who download and upload unauthorized content, the point of the law is that these people are liable, so they can be sued if the right holders choose to do so.
37), and uploading also involves making an upstream permanent copy of the movie on a network platform (Rodrigues & Druschel, 2010, p. The liability of internet users who upload and download unauthorized movies is straightforward, since downloading definitely creates a permanent reproduction of a movie (Quintais, 2018, p. “It is not in dispute that the rise of unauthorized streaming websites raises the question of copyright infringement, especially as it relates to reproduction rights.
A World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) report on the laws of member states (2014) surveyed prohibited reproduction from unlawful sources, which included “a peer-to-peer network, newsgroups, torrent sites and the like, where movies and music have been uploaded without consent from the right holders (WIPO, 2013). However, the advancement of streaming media technology has also helped increase the number of unauthorized streaming services. The preference now is for streaming-so films can be consumed in real time-rather than downloading for later viewing. To access films more quickly and conveniently, people are rapidly discovering new ways of watching films at home. One remarkable example is that people increasingly prefer to watch films in the comfort of their homes rather than go to a cinema. The rise of the internet has not only greatly advanced the progress of science and technology, but also profoundly changed people's ways of life. In addition, we explore the liability of users who stream unauthorized content via virtual private network services.Īlong with the rapid development of internet technology, networks have become an indispensable part of most people's lives. To this end, the article analyses the reproduction act of streaming platform users under the UK and European Union approaches and examines Article 5(1) of the Information Society Directive in the context of streaming. Since the liability of platforms has been extensively discussed in the academic literature, in this article we mainly focus on the liability of users who stream unauthorized works. Against this background, legal issues arising from the streaming of media online is an area of huge current interest, one issue being the exact liability of providers and users of streaming services and whether they are infringing on the reproduction right of the copyright holders. However, it has been noted that some of them are streaming unauthorized content, which has posed a major challenge to the entertainment sector's traditional business model. With the rapid development of streaming media technology, more and more people have begun to watch films on streaming websites.