Court decision · 26 March 2021
Warner Music UK Ltd and Sony Music Entertainment UK Ltd v TuneIn Inc
[2021] EWCA Civ 441 · Court of Appeal of England and Wales (Civil Division)
What it means for your code
Embedding or reframing someone else's stream in your player is not the same as linking to their page; the territorial scope of their licence becomes your problem.
What happened
An aggregator indexed internet radio streams and played them inside its own player with its own interface and advertising, without licensing the underlying recordings.
What was decided
Providing links to streams that are not licensed for the UK, presented within the aggregator's own framing so that a new public is reached, is itself a communication to the public and infringes.
The legal test applied
- Communication to the public requires an act of communication to a new public
- Framing a stream inside one's own interface, with one's own advertising, targets a public the rights holder did not license
- The territorial scope of the original licence determines who that new public is
What would have changed the outcome
- A plain hyperlink to a stream freely licensed for the same territory reaches no new public
Summary and analysis by Lawpatch, checked by an editor against the source. Risk analysis, not legal advice; the law may have moved on since this decision.