TuneIn Radio Infringed Sony & Warner’s Copyrights, High Court Rules

[Matrix]

 

In 2017, Sony and Warner sued US-based radio service TuneIn, claiming the company infringed its copyrights in the UK. A judgment handed down today by the High Court states that while TuneIn does not offer content itself, the provision of hyperlinks to content not officially licensed in the UK constitutes a communication to the public and is therefore infringement.

TuneIn is one of the most prominent and recognizable providers of radio content in the world.

 

Available for free or on a premium basis, the service offers access to well over 100,000 radio stations and millions of podcasts. It doesn’t provide this content itself but acts as an indexer (“audio guide service”, according to TuneIn) for those looking to access third-party streams.

 

In 2017 it emerged that Sony Music UK and Warner Music UK had sued the US-based company in the UK, claiming that since many of the TuneIn-indexed stations are unlicensed to play music in the region, linking to them amounts to infringement of the labels’ copyrights.

 

Today, the High Court of England Wales handed down its decision and it doesn’t look good for TuneIn. The judgment begins by stating the opposing positions of the labels and TuneIn, which are particularly familiar in these types of disputes concerning hyperlinking.

 

“The claimants say that a finding for the defendant will fatally undermine copyright. The defendant says that a finding for the claimants will break the internet,” Justice Birss writes.

 

The labels argued that TuneIn needs a license, an assertion “strongly disputed” by TuneIn. The company argued that it does not “store any music, and merely provides users of TuneIn Radio with hyperlinks to works which have already been made freely available on the internet without any geographic or other restriction.”

 

In other words, TuneIn presents itself as not unlike Google search but instead of indexing websites, it indexes and links to radio streams. However, Justice Birss declared the service to be “much more than that”, in part due to its curation and search features.

 

“I find therefore that the activity of TuneIn does amount to an act of communication of the relevant works; and also that that act of communication is to a ‘public’, in the sense of being to an indeterminate and fairly large number of persons,” he writes.

 

The ruling, which was first published by a blog connected to Bird and Bird, the law firm that represented TuneIn, runs to 47 pages and is both extremely detailed and complex. However, the conclusion to Judge Birss’ judgment can be summarized in a straightforward manner.

 

When TuneIn supplied UK users with links to radio stations that are already licensed in the UK, the company did not infringe Sony or Warner’s copyrights.

 

However, when TuneIn supplied UK users with links to radio stations that are not licensed for the UK or are not licensed at all, the company did infringe the labels’ rights.

 

Noting that TuneIn cannot rely on the safe harbor defenses under the E-Commerce Directive, Judge Birss declared TuneIn, “liable for infringement by authorization and as a joint tortfeasor.”

 

The full judgment can be found here (pdf)

 

 

source

[zanderthunder]

The court can sue TuneIn if their office is based at United Kingdom. But if TuneIn's office is based at United States, they can't pursue a court case due to difference in both country's jurisdictions.

[steven36]

Time to block the UK i guess  , already  many radio stations  that wont work in the USA  with Radionomy . But work fine in Canada with a VPN  then there some station by anther group that only work with  a USA IP.

2016

• 26 February - In a lawsuit filed at a California federal court, a group of Sony brands – including Arista Records, LaFace Records and Sony Music Entertainment – accused Radionomy of copyright infringement.^[7] The case was settled out of court shortly thereafter.

 

 

It like Deezer is a paid only service in USA  but i can pirate music  from them  with a USA IP but i have to change ips to another country to Listen  .

 

Tunein  dont have many radio stations  no way , but they have podcast and  news as  well.

 

Tunein is American owned  ,  Radionomy is Netherlands owned and Deezer is from France. 

 

The ones from Russia work best  Albums and Albums of 320 k to  stream  or download online , No DRM

 

 

For Online Radio i use goodvives  and added my local station  i been listening too since I was teenager and I'm good.

 

 

[T3rM1nat0Rr3]

22 hours ago, Edward Raja said:

The court can sue TuneIn

 

The court doesn't sue TuneIn.

[steven36]

Update  with  Tuinin's Feedback

 

UK Court Rules that TuneIn Radio Infringed Sony & Warner’s Copyrights

 

 

• The High Court rules that TuneIn will have to change the business model or acquire some licenses.
• The internet radio platform has aided and abetted copyright infringement.
• Sony and Warner Music have been vindicated two years after they submitted their lawsuit.

The British High Court of Justice in London has ruled in favor of Warner Music UK Ltd. and Sony Music Entertainment UK Ltd. The legal case had started back in 2017 when the plaintiffs sued TuneIn for copyright infringement. TuneIn is an online audio streaming service that is enjoyed by more than 75 million users, delivering music, radio feed, podcasts, live news, and more. TuneIn isn’t hosting any content on its platform, but instead provides hyperlinks to it. As the court ruled, these hyperlinks lead to non-licensed material, and thus indexing them is a case of copyright infringement.

 

The case was based on the fact that music is being licensed in certain regions, but TuneIn ignored these details completely. The labels also maintained that TuneIn needed a license to carry out its operation in this way, but the internet radio still considers this to go against the main essence of internet communications, putting geographic restrictions where there technically aren’t any, and wrongfully correlating links to the actual content. While the court recognized that TuneIn offered some feeds legitimately, feeds of radio stations that were not licensed in the UK or not licensed at all were deemed as blatant cases of copyright infringement.

 

The detailed verdict also covers the liability of users recording the audio feeds, and how this is aiding and abetting of copyright infringing activities. Also, the court decides that the safe harbor provisions that TuneIn relied on aren’t applicable in its case, and don’t lift the recognized liabilities. All that said, TuneIn can no longer operate in the UK in the same way that it has been operating so far. To continue, the platform will either have to obtain a full license for the content they link to or remove the thousands of radio stations that are underpinning the copyright infringement problem.

 

This opens Pandora’s box for all radio streaming platforms that operate in the UK, and there are quite a lot of them out there actually. These apps and platforms generate revenue through the provision of copyright-infringing links and don’t compensate the creators or the rightsholders for the use of their material. They will either have to share that revenue with the creators as well as middlemen or fundamentally change their business model.

 

TuneIn’s CEO Juliette Morris responded to us,“Today in the U.K., a judgment was announced in a lawsuit involving TuneIn, the leading directory service identifying freely available audio content on the Internet, and Sony Music and Warner Music regarding the availability of music radio stations to TuneIn users in the U.K. The U.K. Court found in favor of TuneIn on the most important claim, confirming that music radio stations licensed in the U.K. can be made available through the TuneIn service to TuneIn’s U.K. users. 

 

While we continue to evaluate the ruling and consider all options, including appeal, we believe the judgment will have very little impact on the company’s revenue and ongoing growth strategies. We won on the most important element of the case, which was the right to provide U.K. users with access to U.K.-authorized radio stations. TuneIn is committed to complying with all applicable laws in the countries we serve and will continue to defend the right to operate a directory service providing listeners access to content freely available on the Internet.”

 

Source