BREAKING NEWS FROM THE STREAMING SECTOR
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CONTROVERSIAL EU COPYRIGHT DIRECTIVE PASSES
The European Parliament has voted to approve Articles 11 and 13 of the EU Copyright Directive. Proposed by the European Commission in September 2016 as part of Europe’s Digital Single Market strategy, the Copyright Directive intends to reform European copyright laws. After the vote, Andrus Ansip, Vice President for the Digital Single Market, and Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, said in a joint statement: “Our aim for this reform is to bring tangible benefits for EU citizens, researchers, educators, writers, artists, press and cultural heritage institutions and to open up the potential for more creativity and content by clarifying the rules and making them fit for the digital world. At the same time, we aim to safeguard free speech and ensure that online platforms – including 7000 European online platforms – can develop new and innovative offers and business models.”
The most significant part of the legislation, Articles 11 and 13, would require sites to pay publishers for using pieces of content and make content platforms liable for copyright infringements committed by their users. Supporters of the Directive assert that it would force internet giants such as Google, Facebook and YouTube to pay artists, news organisations and publishers for content that is uploaded to their platforms. Critics have described Article 11 as a “link tax” that will force platforms to pay if they want to use snippets of content linking to other sites, while Article 13 has been criticised as a “meme ban”, which would force removal of any unlicensed copyrighted content or imagery from any platform and lead to unprecedented filtering of uploaded content. The legislation has received wide support from film studios, big publishers
and major music labels, but has been strongly resisted by big media platforms like Google and Facebook, as well as the Wikimedia Foundation and GitHub. In the wake of the vote, music rights association ASCAP tweeted: “This a big deal. The European Parliament has approved passage of the #CopyrightDirective, which will give give (sic) music creators greater protection and fair compensation in the digital age” Writer and activist Cory Doctorow tweeted: “The day this goes into effect will be the last day that independent photogs can operate. Without a rights-clearance house behind you, you won’t be able to post any street scenes: riots, parades, stock, police brutality, etc to any platform.” The final version of the legislation still needs to be negotiated with the European commission and EU member states before becoming law. The net vote will take place in January 2019.
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