Austria has published a new draft law

On September 2, 2021, Austria has published a new draft law, which implements DSM Directive. The draft law is in consultation till October 13, 2021. In regards to Art. 17 of the DSM Directive, Austrian draft law is a mixture of the German approach, on which IPI already reported, and Europan Commission’s Guidelines.

The Austrian proposal took up key elements first introduced in the German implementation drafts, which are the protection of minor uses from automated filters (15 seconds, 160 characters, 250kb), the ability for users to flag uploads as legitimate, and the ability for users’ organizations to act against platforms that engage in structural over-blocking.

The whole proposal is structurally similar to the German proposal, but instead of “presumption of legal use”, which is contained in German proposal, the Austrian proposal works with a prohibition of automated blocking of “small parts of works or other subject matter”.

You can follow the implementation of the DSM Directive by country here.