infoJustice

Authors: Péter Mezei and István Harkai

Abstract: In the platform age, copyright protected contents are primarily disseminated over the internet. This model poses various challenges to the copyright regime that was mainly designed in and for the analogue age. One of these challenges is related to the fair balance between the interests of rightholders and other members of the society. Copyright norms try to guarantee this balance by granting a high level of protection for rightholders and preserving some flexibility for end-users.

The present article focuses on whether platforms’ end-user license agreements contribute to the preservation of that balance, and how they allow for or diminish the exercise of user flexibilities. We collected, analysed and compared the private ordering practices of 17 service providers grouped in four main categories.

Our empirical examination demonstrated that intermediaries offer substantive flexibilities for their consumers, on the one hand, and they meaningfully limit the possibilities and decrease the expectations of end-users by restricting certain uses and providing limited access to contents, on the other hand. We measured the flexibility of the selected platforms, and we provided for the state of the art of platform flexibilities in the period preceding the implementation deadline of the EU’s CDSM Directive.

Citation: Mezei, Péter, and István Harkai. “End-user flexibilities in digital copyright law – an empirical analysis of end-user license agreements*”, Interactive Entertainment Law Review 5, 1 (2022): 2-21, accessed Sep 26, 2022, https://doi.org/10.4337/ielr.2022.0003