Opposition against Article 13 of the Directive

The opposition against Article 13 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market is getting stronger and stronger.

The provision obliges platforms, on which users upload contents (such as Facebook and YouTube), to automatically filter and block all the contents, for which licenses have not been concluded. Experts and academics are against the introduction of such filters and censorship, and the civil initiative is drawing attention to the negative impacts of the provision on users. Now that Article 13 is being negotiated in the trilogue, it turned out that even big organizations of right holders, especially in the audio-visual and sports sector as well as organizations representing European authors, publishers, film and music producers and broadcasters, are against the provision as it is. In their opinion, the provision bears too much of a burden regarding the notification of the infringement on the right holders.

Here is a list of just a few stakeholders that have already expressed their opposition against Article 13:

– experts;

– academics;

– more than 4 million signatories of the petition against the introduction of filters;

– Civil Libraries Union for Europe and other organizations defending the rights of Internet users;

– representatives of the audio-visual and sports sectors across Europe;

– organizations representing European authors, publishers, film and music producers and broadcasters.

On the other hand, YouTube is tries to impose Content ID, its filtering technology, as the standard for efficient copyright protection that should be used also by other competitive platforms. Were those, who were warning against the possible strengthening of Google’s position, right?