Christophe

  The organisation Creative Commons promotes the use of several ‘Creative Commons’ licenses (CC licences) that are inspired by open source software licensing. Applying to non-software works (text, images, videos, etc.), Creative Commons enables right holders to give the public permissions to make use of their works on conditions of their choice.   Licensed images with Creative Commons   In that sense, copyright holders retain the control of their copyright, while allowing certain use of the work: all rights on the image, or just some of them.  In other words, Creative Commons offers an online form that enables the right holders to configure exactly which of their exclusive rights they agree to give away. Several questions are asked to define the extent of the licence, such as: Would I like to give permission to the use for commercial purposes?, Would I like to give permission to modifications of my work?, etc   Among others, the most common licensing attributed by right holders is an Attribution licence (BY), with permits anybody to use their images however they wish, provided that they give credit (ie ‘attribution’) to the right holders in the form they prescribe. Such a solution has therefore the merit to promote an easy, fair and legal way to share rights with others.   Created to propose an alternative solution to the issue of infringements of digital images, the policy of Creative Commons keeps the interests of the right holders in all events, as provided by their warning on their website:   “Please note that search.creativecommons.org is not a search engine, but rather offers convenient access to search services provided by other independent organizations. CC has no control over the results that are returned. Do [...]

Background Unauthorised publication of copyrighted images may be authorised when the images lead to the public understanding of significant problems or events. To take an example, the unauthorised use of sketches relying on copyrighted photographs of John Kennedy’s assassination was authorised due to public interest in the event. Another example: the individual who published the copyrighted photograph of John Belushi in a book about his death was not held liable for copyright infringement because it helped to promote free expression and robust debate on the event.   The facts of the Painer Case   The landmark case dealing with the public security exception is undoubtedly the Painer case. Mrs Painer, who is a freelance photographer specialised in children portraits, took photographs of an Austrian girl, Natascha Kampusch, with particular attention to the background, position and facial expression. During several years, she usually sold the photographs she made with her name and address on it. In 1996, Natascha Kampusch was kidnapped and the Police used the photograph at issue to launch a search appeal.   In 2006, Natascha, then aged 10 years, escaped from her kidnaper and before her first public appearance, magazine and newspaper publishers published this photograph in their newspapers, magazines and websites either without indicating the name of the photographer or indicating a name other than Ms Painer's as the photographer. Several of these publications also featured a ‘photo-fit’, generated by computer from the contested photographs, to represent Natascha's presumed current appearance, since there was no recent photograph of her. Ms Painer brought therefore the case in courts for copyright infringement. Several issues were addressed to the CJEU.   The decision of the CJEU   In this decision, the CJEU had to deal [...]