On 29 November 2017 the Court of Justice handed down its ruling in the proceedings VCAST Limited v. R.T.I. s.p.a. (Case C-265/16).On 7 September 2017the EU Advocate General stated in its opinion that ‘cloud computing’ relates to the access, through a telecommunications network on demand, to shared computer resources where, unlike the conventional ways of registration and reproduction the end-user does not purchase or hire the material computing devices, but it uses the computing service and infrastructure provided by a third party.Therefore in his opinion this matter could not be considered an exception for private copies of works protected by copyright and therefore considered lawful.The Court of Justice has shared these conclusions and has clarified that the video registration in cloud cannot be considered lawful if carried out with the ‘active’ intervention of third parties.
In confirming this, the Court of Justice has pointed out that the regime of exceptions and limitations to copyright provided under art. 5 of the Directive 2001/29 (InfoSoc) must be interpreted in a restrictive way and hence, the so-called exception of private copying (art. 5(2)(b), of the Directive) ‘must not be interpreted in away which imposes the copyright owner to tolerate, beyond such limitation expressly provided for, infringements of its rights through the realization of private copying’.