Uploading third-party photos to your own cloud – copyright infringement?

Cloud Computing offers users numerous possibilities. In particular, it enables the user to retrieve services and stored data from anywhere. However, legal questions repeatedly arise in relation to this technology. For example, what is the situation when one uploads third-party photos to one's own internet cloud? Does this infringe copyright? The Regional Court (LG) Heidelberg dealt with this issue.

In the case decided by the LG Heidelberg, a private person had purchased a used hard drive from another private person via eBay. The hard drive accidentally still contained private holiday photos of the seller.

The buyer admitted that he had mirrored the photos into his internet cloud.

The seller took the view that copyright infringement had occurred, because the data had in any case been made accessible to the corresponding internet cloud provider and thus disclosed to third parties.

The buyer, on the other hand, argues that he had never made the photos accessible to third parties in any way on the internet and therefore had not committed any copyright infringement.

The court's decision regarding photos in the cloud

The LG Heidelberg dismissed the seller's action and decided with judgment of 02.12.2015 – Az. 1 O 54/15, that uploading third-party photos to one's own internet cloud does not constitute copyright infringement.

The court's reasoning was that there was no act of publication or distribution.

In cloud computing, only the user has access rights to the storage space assigned to him. Images that are uploaded to a cloud are not thereby made available to the public.

Furthermore, it cannot be assumed without further ado that the cloud operator has access to the content stored by users. There are no indications that any possible access by the cloud operator to the data was caused or desired by the user.

Conclusion

As a general rule, uploading third-party images to one's own cloud is not copyright infringement. However, the situation could be different if the user deliberately uploads the images in order to cause third parties to access the data.