Guidelines of the European Commission on the implementation of Article 17 of the DSM Directive are published!
Just a weekend before the deadline for the implementation of the Directive on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive), more precisely on Friday, 4 June 2021, the European Commission published guidelines regarding the implementation of Article 17 of the DSM Directive.
Some countries have already implemented the DSM Directive. The initially non-binding guidelines support the approach of Germany to the implementation, which explicitly introduces an ex-ante mechanism, which other Member States should follow suit. The guidelines are otherwise very loose and, according to critics, do not provide sufficient protection of users’ rights.
The long-awaited guidelines include a mechanism that allows rightholders to override safeguards against the automatic blocking of users’ uploaded content by claiming that the use of their work “could cause significant economic damage.” This suggests that this can be almost any content. The European Commission has thus not provided clear rules with guidelines to discourage abuse of the system, so the responsibility for respecting the fundamental rights of users will be in the hands of rightholders.
The latest version of the guidelines is, in fact, a step back from the European Commission’s original commitment to preserving the fundamental rights of users, which is required in particular from the point of view of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
In the future, it will be interesting to follow the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Poland v. European Commission, where Poland claims that Article 17 of the DSM Directive introduces censorship, which is inconsistent with both the Polish Constitution and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. According to some, the guidelines are an additional argument against Article 17 of the DSM Directive.
You can read more about the guidelines on the implementation of Article 17 of the DSM Directive here.
The 43rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (hereinafter SCCR) made substantial progress on the issues advocated by the A2K Coalition (Access to Knowledge Coalition), which IPI is a member of. This year’s session was the most productive on the issues of exceptions and limitations. James Love (Knowledge Ecology International), a long-time observer at WIPO, described the outcome and the impact of the public interest community as the strongest since the conclusion of the Marrakech Treaty, which brought global copyright exceptions for the benefit of the blind and visually impaired.
Today, March 17, 2023, a symposium on law in the information society is taking place in the golden lecture hall of the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. Dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič will present copyright aspects of artificial intelligence at the symposium.
The third day of the 43rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is intended for discussion on the topic of exceptions and limitations to copyright, especially in connection with the right to research.
The 43rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR/43) is being held in Geneva from March 13 to 17, 2023. The Intellectual Property Institute has a permanent observer status at WIPO since 2022 and is also a member of the Access to Knowledge Coalition (A2K coalition).