Changing the numbers of the articles won’t make the EU copyright reform better!
If the European Parliament adopts the Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market next week, especially Article 13 (which was changed to Article 17 just before the vote), the internet as a space for communication, where everyone freely communicates with everyone else, will change drastically.
The problematic provision will pose an obligation to platforms, on which users upload certain contents, to conclude license agreement for practically every possible copyrighted work, otherwise they will be liable for the uploaded content infringing copyright. To avoid a relatively high degree of legal risk, platforms will in doubt block the content (with upload filters that are currently not able to distinguish lawful use from copyright infringement) and with this avoid liability.
To better understand the consequences of Article 13, watch this video or read the article and scheme prepared by Communia on this issue.
Yesterday, European companies joined the civil initiative fighting against censorship, organizations in the scientific, economic, librarian, educational and other sectors warning about the threat to freedom of expression, open education and research, as well as the rightsholders in the audio-visual and sports sector, entertainment and music industry on the other side who believe that the directive imposes too much obligations on them. In an open letter 130 European companies exposed the negative implications of Articles 11 (now Article 15) and 13 (now Article 17) on the European economy. Changing the numbers of the Directive in not enough, Europe needs a better legislative solution!
The French government has a new plan for Europe that could help the EU compete with the US tech giants: the digital commons.
The International Association of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), PAC Centre for digital preservation, hosted at the National Library of Poland is holding a series of 10 webinars on basic understanding of digitisation projects.
Communia, a non-governmental organisation that advocates for policies that expand the public domain and increase access to and reuse of culture and knowledge, issued twenty new copyright policy recommendations for the next decade.
The DSM Directive entered into force in June 2019 and the deadline for implementation expired on 7 June 2021. On 23 June 2021, the Commission launched multiple infringement procedures and sent letters of formal notice to Slovenia and 22 other Member States that had failed to notify it of the full transposition of the Directive. Slovenia remains among the 14 Member States against which the Commission is continuing the infringement procedure. On 19 May 2022, the Commission sent reasoned opinions to Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Greece, France, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland and Sweden.