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Breathing Space for Cloud-Based Business Models

  1. PhD Martin Senftleben

Abstract

Cloud-based services keep forming, changing and evaporating like clouds in the sky. They range from personal storage space for films and music to social media and user-generated content platforms. The copyright issues raised by these platforms seem as numerous as the liquid droplets and frozen crystals constituting clouds in the atmosphere of our planet. As providers of cloud-based services may seek to avoid dependence on creative industries and collecting societies, one of these questions concerns the breathing space that copyright law offers outside the realm of exclusive rights. Which limitations of protection can serve as a basis for the development of new business models? Which safe harbours may be invoked to avoid secondary liability for copyright infringement? Which obligations may result from injunctions sought by copyright owners? After outlining relevant cloud services (section 1) and identifying the competing interests involved (section 2), the inquiry will address these influence factors – limitations, safe harbours and injunctions (section 3). The analysis will yield the insight that the most effective protection of copyright in the cloud is likely to result from acceptance of a compromise solution that, instead of insisting on the power to prohibit unauthorised use, leaves room for the interests of users and the business models of platform providers (concluding section 4).

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Any party may pass on this Work by electronic means and make it available for download under the terms and conditions of the Digital Peer Publishing License. The text of the license may be accessed and retrieved at http://www.dipp.nrw.de/lizenzen/dppl/dppl/DPPL_v2_en_06-2004.html.

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JIPITEC – Journal of Intellectual Property, Information Technology and E-Commerce Law
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