With its “Copyright in the Digital Single Market”
directive the European Parliament took a giant step last week toward empowering creatives and news publisher to negotiate with the Internet giants for a share of the revenue received as a result of their distribution of creative content they do not own. The new copyright rules also contain safeguards on freedom of expression.
Key elements of the legislation include:
• Internet platforms are liable for content that users upload
• Some uploaded material, such as memes or GIFs, now specifically excluded from directive
• Hyperlinks to news articles, accompanied by “individual words or very short extracts”, can be shared freely
• Journalists must get a share of any copyright-related revenue obtained by their news publisher
• Start-up platforms subject to lighter obligations
The vote backing the reforms was 348 in favor to 274 against and 36 abstentions. While this is an important first step now each member state must approve the Parliament’s decision. If the member states accept the text adopted by the European Parliament, it will take effect after publication in the official journal. Then member states have up to 2 years to implement it.
The directive aims to ensure that the longstanding rights and obligations of copyright law also apply to the internet. YouTube, Facebook and Google News are some of the internet household names that will be most directly affected by this legislation.
Freedom Of Expression Protected
Sharing snippets of news articles is specifically excluded from the scope of the directive and may continue exactly as before. However, the directive also contains provisions to avoid news aggregators abusing this. The ‘snippet’ can therefore continue to appear in a Google News newsfeeds, for example, or when an article is shared on Facebook, provided it is “very short”.
Uploading protected works for quotation, criticism, review, caricature, parody or pastiche has been protected even more than it was before, ensuring that memes and Gifs will continue to be available and shareable on online platforms.
For more information see the full
CEPIC report.
Hopefully, the U.S. Congress will follow the example of our European neighbors.