The Directive still has to be approved by Member States
This week the EU adopted the legislation, which will change the internet as we know it. But all is not lost. First, the Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market must be approved by the Council, where the votes of the representatives are weighted according to the population of the member states (the bigger the population of a member state, the more the vote counts). There is still a theoretical chance for a major state to reject the Directive.
© EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Some place their hopes with Germany, where the political party CDU, ironically the same political party that rapporteur of the European Parliament Axel Voss belongs to, has already announced that it will strive for Germany not to implement upload filters. However, this seems unlikely and additionally complicated due to some alleged political plots.
Slovenia did not give approval to the Directive in February. Should the directive pass in the Council, it will have to be implemented into Slovenian legislation by spring 2021. This means that the Slovene Copyright and Related Rights Act will have to be amended and supplemented according to the regulation set forth in the Directive. The provisions of the Directive allow for some manoeuvring space, which can yet be utilized not only to benefit rightsholders and tech companies but to also consider the interests of creators and internet users.
According to EFF, the most problematic articles could also come under the scrutiny of the CJEU. The problematic Article 13 (now 17) must comply with previous provisions of the E-Commerce Directive, which prohibits proactive prior content control, also through general content filtering, as already established by Court of Justice of the EU.
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).