United Kingdom: High Court rules that Fanatix website (short videos) violates copyright of content

The High Court of England and Wales ruled that publishing, on the internet, a video of eight seconds, of which one does not own the rights, violates the original content copyright, on 18/03/2016. This decision follows a joint complaint lodged by the pay-TV group Sky plc and the EWCB (England and Wales Cricket Board), the governing body of cricket in England and Wales, against the English website Fanatix.com and its application, which offers short cricket videos they the website does not hold the rights to.

"The clips were not used in order to inform the audience about a current event, but presented for consumption because of their intrinsic interest and value. Furthermore, although the fact that a news service is a commercial one funded by advertising revenue does not prevent its use from being for the purpose of reporting current events, I consider that the Defendants’ objective was purely commercial rather than genuinely informatory," stated Judge Richard Arnold, on 23/03/2016.

The entirety of the High Court's ruling is available here .

• "Quantitatively, 8 seconds is not a large…