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.
On 23rd of November, 2021, the European Commission has published two reports in the field of copyright, as required by Directives 2014/26/EU (CRM Directive) and 2019/790 (DSM Directive). They are supported by two studies: Study on emerging issues on collective licensing management in the digital environment, and Study on selected issues relating to the application of the CRM Directive.
A new book “Law and Artificial Intelligence: Issues of Ethics, Human Rights and Social Harm” was published (Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of law in Ljubljana, 2021), the editors of which are prof. dr. Aleš Završnik and dr. Katja Simončič. The author of one of the articles is also dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič, LL.M., LL.M., who wrote an article on the topic of whether artificial intelligence can be an author of a copyright work.
Jožef Štefan Institute is organising GO-DIP workshop series, first of them coming on November 19th, 2021 is revolving around software IP and data agreements. The GO-DIP project aims to increase the competencies of knowledge generators and intermediaries. At 15.10 dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič, LL.M., LL.M. will be lecturing in the Workshop: Development of a checklist for model digital IP agreements. Welcome!
2nd GPAI Summit will occur from 11-12 November, 2021 in Paris, France. Leading international AI experts from civil society, academia, industry and governments, including ministerial-level delegates from GPAI’s Membership, will come together for GPAI’s annual event. This public-facing event will include reporting on the ten Working Groups’ study topics, including the reporting of Data Governance Working Group (DG WG). Public conferences will be broadcasted live on GPAI’s Youtube channel. Welcome!