Court of Appeal of Brussels - 2021/AR/205
| Hof van Beroep - 2021/AR/205 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Court: | Cour d'appel de Bruxelles/ Hof van beroep Brussel (Belgium) |
| Jurisdiction: | Belgium |
| Relevant Law: | Article 6 GDPR Article 20 GDPR Article 21 GDPR Art. 209 WER |
| Decided: | 26.05.2021 |
| Published: | |
| Parties: | |
| National Case Number/Name: | 2021/AR/205 |
| European Case Law Identifier: | |
| Appeal from: | APD/GBA (Belgium) 02/2021 |
| Appeal to: | Not appealed |
| Original Language(s): | Dutch |
| Original Source: | Arrest van 26 mei 2021 van het Marktenhof AR 205 (in Dutch) |
| Initial Contributor: | Enzo Marquet |
The Court of Appeal of Brussels held that a music company could continue to manage the social media fanpage of a music artist, even after its contract with that artist had expired. The company has a legitimate interest to process the personal data on the fanpage, so long as this processing is in line with the right of reproduction, and the original contract.
English Summary
Facts
After a contractual relationship with the music company who owned the Facebook fanpage of the musician, the latter wanted to get back control of this page. The DPA issued an order to transfer the page (APD/GBA - 14/2020) on the basis of data portability, but this order was annulled by the Court of Appeal. The litigation chamber of the DPA then issued a second decision (APD/GBA - 02/2021) which imposed a fine of €10,000 on the music company for not transferring the fanpage of the musician to them, after they had exercised their right to data portability and right to object. The defendant has now appealed this decision.
Dispute
Is the processing of personal data based on contract in the context of artist exploitation, still valid after the expiration of the contract?
Holding
The Court of Appeals holds that the (contractually agreed) exploitation of an artist (page), even though the name is the same as the person, falls under commercial practices and right to exploitation, and not data processing. As such, there is no link with copyright.
The personal data are in any case very limited (if there would be any processing of personal data at all), and the exploitation is a legitimate interest of the defendant, the interest of it is much more important. On top of that, the exploitation helps the complainant grow in outreach.
The Court of Appeal holds that the processing of data would still be legitimate as there is a legal ground for it (the exploitation contract). Since the defendants sufficiently prove that they exploited the fan page in accordance with the justification performance of a contract and in line with the producer's right of reproduction contained in Article Xl.209 WER (Economic Code) and all this in return for payment of royalties to the complainant, no violation of Article 21(1) juncto Article 12(3) can be shown by the DPA.
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English Machine Translation of the Decision
The decision below is a machine translation of the Dutch original. Please refer to the Dutch original for more details.
