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Interesting. You're probably right, and it makes me think of some similar but slightly different situations

For instance what about cafes having magazine subscriptions that they give you a password for when you buy from them, much like they might have a couple of newspapers lying around (or daily coffee news prints)

I wonder if that would count as fair dealing... Not "selling password access" but "giving password access to paying customers of our business"

I also wonder how it's really any different than bars doing big pay per view events where they charge a cover to get in so you can watch




Bars (in UK) pay enormous sums of money to present PPV broadcasts and such. They are charged, usually, according to floorspace; sometimes size of screens is factored in, sometimes there are maximum numbers of attendees.

It's similar to libraries having to buy a book along with a license that bypasses the usual imprint that says "not for lending"; they don't just buy a book from a bookstore.


A license for a live event stream makes sense, but libraries having to buy special licenses to loan out physical books seems completely nuts to me. Does the UK not have an equivalent to first sale doctrine for physical goods?


Maybe a better example would have been people hosting pay per view parties at their houses

They certainly don't pay for an event license for that, but some of those parties can get pretty big


> I also wonder how it's really any different than bars doing big pay per view events where they charge a cover to get in so you can watch

One person watching versus dozens of people watching. And the key phrase "public performance" for US law.

If you wanted to let exactly one person watch a PPV, or exactly one table with a handful of people, then you could potentially justify that.




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