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 Accessible Books Consortium (ABC) has launched a new application that provides access to digital books to individuals who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise disabled.
Communia in collaboration with Centrum Cyfrowe is conducting an international research project, the main subject of which is the experience of teachers in the use of copyrighted works during the time of remote education imposed by the pandemic of COVID-19. You are kindly invited to participate!
On April 6, 2021, at 14.00, dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič, LL.M., LL.M. will deliver a lecture on data analytics (TDM) and copyright at the Faculty of Computer Science, University of Ljubljana.
On Thursday, 1 April 2021, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) will hold an online event dedicated to Article 17 of the new EU Directive 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the digital single market, titled: “Platform liability under Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, Automated Filtering and Fundamental Rights: An Impossible Match”. Welcome!