German non-paper regarding Article 13 of the Directive

Teresa Nobre, Communia, writes about the German Council delegation and a proposed “non-paper” with which it tries to mitigate the negative effects of Article 13 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.

The propositions are the following:

– exemption for platforms with an annual turnover of up to 20 million euros;
– exceptions of liability of platforms in certain situations (if for instance they made their best efforts to obtain an authorization from the rightsholders);
– introduction a mandatory user-generated content exception to copyright, subject to the payment of a fair remuneration to the rightsholders.

Even though the things are moving in the right direction, the introduction of a new remuneration scheme is problematic. Why would users have to pay for uploading and making available content that they have produced themselves, where it includes, in whole or in part, existing protected works and subject matter for non-commercial purposes and for purposes such as parody, caricature or criticism? This seems like a tax on freedom on creation and freedom on expression. Isn’t that already allowed under the copyright legislation?