Recalibrating Territoriality in Platform End-User License Agreements
23 Pages Posted: 20 Nov 2023
Date Written: October 24, 2023
Abstract
The issue of territoriality in copyright law has long been an area of in-depth and thorough research. The territoriality of copyright norms is an established fact, but it is also challenged by technological advances and a long-standing political process. Geographical determinacy is a crucial determinant of the cross-border flow of content enabled by various communication technologies. This is also reflected in the overall legal norms governing the issue. On the one hand, the digital space created by the emergence of the Internet allows for cross-border content delivery, while on the other hand, the free movement of goods and services, one of the four fundamental freedoms of the European Union, also appears to be incompatible with territorial copyright regimes. There have been many attempts to resolve these contradictions in the European Union and legal geography, a research method combining the interfaces of geography and law, can help to find a solution. Using this research method, this paper takes a new approach to comparing the internal market and territorial fragmentation rules of EU copyright law and the contractual practices of platform providers, in order to answer the question of how geography determines the development of a legal area and how far these geographical and political boundaries can be crossed.
Keywords: Legal Geography, Territoriality, Authors' rights and Neighbouring Rights, Intermediary Service Providers, End-user License Agreements
JEL Classification: O34, K11
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation