Web browsing is copyright infringement, publishers argue

Europeans may browse the Internet without fear of infringing copyrights, as the European Union Court of Justice ruled in a decision that ends a four-year legal battle threatening the open Internet.

In the case, the court slapped down the Newspaper Licensing Agency's (NLA) claim that the technological underpinnings of Web surfing amounted to infringement. The court ruled that "on-screen copies and the cached copies made by an end-user in the course of viewing a website satisfy the conditions" of infringement exemptions spelled out in the EU Copyright Directive.

The NLA's opponent in the case was the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA). The PR group hailed the decision. The NLA is the body that distributes reproductions of newspaper content. Its main argument was the cost that the licensing public relations companies pay for the reproductions should factor in to what is temporarily copied on a reader's computer.