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Author: Eoin

Dr Eoin O'Dell is a Fellow and Associate Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin.

The horrors of copyright from Dracula to Nosferatu

31 October, 202412 November, 2024
| 1 Comment
| Copyright

Dracula NosferatuAbraham “Bram” Stoker (1847–1912) was an Irish author, best known for writing the 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. Stoker drew extensively from Transylvanian folklore and history for the novel, and he gave the title character the name Dracula because he thought it meant “devil” in Romanian.

The novel was published in the United Kingdom in 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company, and in the United States in 1899 by Doubleday & McClure. To secure copyright, US law at the time required the author to deposit two copies of a book with the Copyright Office in the Library of Congress. However, in 1930, when Universal Studios purchased the movie rights, it was discovered that Stoker and Doubleday had deposited only one copy, which effectively meant that the book was in the public domain in the US. The novel and its title character have become mainstays of popular culture, and Stoker’s great grand-nephew Dacre Stoker has suggested that Stoker’s failure to comply with US copyright law contributed to the novel’s enduring status, since US writers and producers did not need to pay a licence fee to use the character. That may have been so in the US, but the opposite was the case in Europe.…

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If Equity can develop new orders when necessary, can it develop anti-SLAPP orders? Part 2: SLAPPs, abuse of process, and anti-SLAPP injunctions

25 October, 202425 October, 2024
| 1 Comment
| Defamation

Malachi O'Doherty1. Introduction: strategic lawsuits against public participation
In an earlier post on this blog, I argued that Equity can develop new orders and injunctions when necessary, and that there was space for it to develop a new order or injunction to prevent strategic lawsuits against public participation (anti-SLAPP orders). There have been several subsequent developments which compel me to revisit that post and make good on my promise in it to return to the topic.

First, the jurisdiction to develop new equitable injunctions has continued to evolve. In Pepper Finance Corporation (Ireland) DAC v Persons Unknown [2023] IESC 21 (31 July 2023), the Supreme Court held that, in exceptional cases, proceedings may be issued against persons unknown. Once such proceedings were properly issued, Hogan J (O’Donnell CJ, and Dunne, Charleton and O’Malley JJ concurring) assumed that an injunction could be ordered against persons unknown, and he proceeded directly to a consideration of the procedural steps to enforce it by means of the contempt jurisdiction, untroubled by any discussion of the basis of this heretofore unspotted injunction. The jurisdiction to award injunctions against persons unknown had been considered by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in Canada Goose UK Retail Ltd v Persons Unknown [2020] EWCA Civ 303 (05 March 2020), which Hogan J cited with approval in Pepper Finance, so it may be that he felt that it was not necessary to revisit the question.…

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Vindicating Open Access to Research Outputs

24 October, 2024
| 1 Comment
| General

International Open Access Week poster
Happy international open access week! Prof Bernt Hugenholtz wrote on the Kluwer Copyright Blog yesterday about the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) statements (2018 | 2018 | (2022 pdf)) in support of secondary publication rights for scholarly articles. I am a principal investigator on a research group that has recently proposed some draft legislation to achieve this end at Irish law.

The research group is called SCOIR (Secondary rights, Copyright, Open access, Institutional policies, and Rights retention), and we are grateful to the National Open Research Forum (NORF) and Knowledge Rights 21 for funding. “Scoir” is an Irish word for “unharness”, and this project aims to unharness the power of open research, consistently with national and EU policy. One of the ways in which we hope to vindicate research outputs, and achieve the goals of Secondary Publishing Rights and Rights Retention in Ireland, is by means of a draft Copyright and Related Rights (Research Outputs and Open Access) Bill 2024 (the current version of the draft Bill is here and here (both pdf downloads)).

The aim of this draft Bill is to underpin and vindicate the rights of researchers and their employers and funders to publish publicly-funded research outputs on open access platforms.…

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Access to RTÉ’s archives

14 October, 202416 October, 2024
| No Comments
| Broadcasting, Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13

Yours truly at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and MediaLast Wednesday, 9 October 2024, I was at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media, for a debate on the Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill 2023 (screengrab from here, left).

This succinct and welcome Bill aims to amend the Broadcasting Act 2009 to provide for greater public access to the archives of Ireland’s national public service broadcaster, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). This is some of my opening statement (as delivered (with added links); the more extensive written version is here (pdf)):

… I was the chair of the Copyright Review Committee. Our report, Modernising Copyright, led to the enactment of the Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Act 2019. One of the aims of our report was to enable users to have access to, and to use, copyright material “in line with the greater public interest”, as it is put in the Bill. For this reason alone, I commend the Bill. It is a crisp Bill with two key subsections. I will make some brief comments about drafting issues.

Section 1(a) of the Bill inserts into section 89 of the Broadcasting Act 2009 a general duty on RTÉ to make archives available for inspection and publication.

…

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The Second Stage of the Defamation (Amendment) Bill, 2024 in the Dáil

20 September, 202422 September, 2024
| 1 Comment
| Defamation, Defamation, Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024, Defamation Act 2009

Dáil Chamber (filter)Introduction
Yesterday, the Dáil took the Second Stage of the Defamation (Amendment) Bill, 2024 (Irish Times). It was introduced by James Browne, Minister of State in the Department of Justice. He said that this is “robust, fair and proportionate legislation, that is, a modernising defamation Bill well-suited to meet the challenges of a rapidly evolving communications landscape”, and he hoped for a swift passage through the House with a view to the early enactment of the Bill.

There were substantial contributions from Deputies Pa Daly (SF, Kerry), Ruairí Ó Murchú (SF, Louth), Brendan Howlin (Labour, Wexford), Jim O’Callaghan (FF, Dublin Bay South), Catherine Murphy (SD, Kildare North), Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP, Dún Laoghaire), Catherine Connolly (Ind, Galway West), and Thomas Pringle (Ind, Donegal). The main issues in the debate concerned the evergreen issues of the abolition of juries in the High Court, and restraints upon strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs). As much as there was universal welcome for SLAPPs, there was equally universal condemnation of the abolition of juries. And there was some disquiet with the absence from the Bill of any provisions relating to social media companies.


Juries
The Minister said that the abolition of juries in High Court defamation cases is a key reform under this Bill.…

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Copyright balance, technological protection measures, and fair use

9 September, 202413 March, 2025
| 1 Comment
| Copyright

Copyright balance: DMCA v Fair useIn a previous post, I examined the judgment of Roy J in the the Federal Court of Canada in 1395804 Ontario Ltd (Blacklock’s Reporter) v Canada (Attorney General) 2024 FC 829 (CanLII) (31 May 2024) [Blacklock’s Reporter], effectively holding that technological protection measures cannot defeat users seeking to rely on the exceptions provided in the copyright legislation. And I put it in the context of sections 370, 374 and 376 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000 (hereafter: CRRA), and of section 377 CRRA (as inserted by section 38 of the Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Act 2019.

There have been subsequent relevant developments, in Canada and the US, and I want to look at those developments in this post. In particular, the US development – inevitably – adds the First Amendment to the mix, which in turn raises questions about whether there are similar constitutional issues in Canada and Ireland.

First, Canada. Barry Sookman argues that the case is riddled with mistakes, that many of its findings are open to significant doubt, and that it cries out for appellate review. In reply, Howard Knoff, argues that Sookman’s arguments are against a straw man.…

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Section 3 of the Defamation (Amendment) Bill – summary relief, costs, punitive damages, online-only publications, and encouraging all eligible periodicals to join the Press Council

2 September, 202431 October, 2024
| 1 Comment
| Defamation, Defamation, Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024

Logo Press Council Press OmbudsmanPart 2 of the Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024 contains section 3, as follows:

PART 2

AMENDMENT OF SECTION 2 OF PRINCIPAL ACT

Amendment of section 2 of Principal Act

3. Section 2 of the Principal Act is amended-

(a) by the insertion of the following definition:

“‘Act of 2015’ means the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015;”,

(b) by the substitution of the following definition for the definition of “periodical”:

“‘periodical’ means—

(a) any newspaper, magazine, journal or other publication that is printed, published or issued, or that circulates, in the State at regular or substantially regular intervals and includes any version thereof published on the internet or by other electronic means, or

(b) any newspaper, magazine, journal or other publication that is published or issued, or that circulates, only on the internet or by other electronic means at regular or substantially regular intervals—

(i) by a publisher who is established in the State, or
(ii) the publication of which is specifically targeted at the general public, or a section of the general public, in the State;”,

and

(c) by the deletion of the definition of “summary relief”.

This section does three things. First, it inserts a reference to the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 (the 2015 Act) into the Defamation Act 2009.…

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Oh no, not again … yet another mistaken offer

27 August, 202430 August, 2024
| No Comments
| Contract, Mistaken offers

Qantas mistake, via OzBargainGrowing up, I remember a tv programme about technology repeating the aphorism that

To err is human; to really foul things up requires a computer

Like many pithy axions, its first usage is unclear. And I don’t remember the particular tv programme on which I heard it. But it is well illustrated today by the following story:


Airline mistakenly sells hundreds of first-class tickets at heavily reduced prices

Qantas … had flights between Australia and the US displayed on its website on Thursday, but instead of advertising the usual rate for these journeys, an error made the flights appear to be up to 85 per cent less than the usual first-class prices. …

The relevant error is pictured above, left. Though it does not appear on the Quantas news site, a statement by a Qantas spokesperson cited a coding error, and said this was “a case where the fare was actually too good to be true”. If something looks too good to be true, that’s because it usually is. And this is not the first time that an airline’s website has really fouled things up. For example, in 2008, an Irish airline listed transatlantic business-class flights for €5 plus taxes; in 2012, a US airline listed flights to Hong Kong at four air-miles plus taxes and fees, or about $35; and, in 2018, a UK airline listed flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv for £1.…

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Welcome

Me in a hat

Hi there! Thanks for dropping by. I’m Eoin O’Dell, and this is my blog: Cearta.ie – the Irish for rights.


“Cearta” really is the Irish word for rights, so the title provides a good sense of the scope of this blog.

In general, I write here about private law, free speech, and cyber law; and, in particular, I write about Irish law and education policy.


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  • A New Look at vouchers in liquidations
  • Defamation reform – one step backward, one step forward, and a mis-step
  • As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted … the Defamation (Amendment) Bill, 2024 has been restored to the Order Paper
  • Defamation in the Programme for Government – Updates
  • Properly distributing the burden of a debt, and the actual and presumed intentions of the parties: non-theories, theories and meta-theories of subrogation
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