Europe passes controversial online copyright reforms
And so the European Parliament has finally done it: it has approved controversial copyright reforms that could have significant repercussions for the internet in Europe.
The set of copyright rules known as the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, but more succinctly as the EU Copyright Directive, has been debated and discussed for several years.
While it is broadly uncontroversial in many regards, there are two facets to the directive that has caused the internet to freak out. Article 11, which has been dubbed the “link tax,” stipulates that websites pay publishers a fee if they display excerpts of copyrighted content — or even link to it. This obviously could have big ramifications for services such as Google News. Then there is Article 13, dubbed the “upload filter,” which would effectively make digital platforms legally liable for any copyright infringements on their platform, which has stoked fears that it would stop people from sharing content — such as GIF-infused memes — on social networks.
In July last year, the European Parliament actually voted 318-278 against these copyright reforms, but only in their existing form. In September, the EU parliament voted to pass the directive, with some minor adjustments made, however this was what it refers to as a negotiating position. It then proceeded through a “trilogue” process involving further negotiations between the EU Council and the Commission. This all took us to today, where the EU Parliament has now voted overwhelmingly, 348 to 274, in favor of the new directive.
Copyright: Parliament just voted in favour of the proposed directive on copyright rules for the digital market. Press release to be published soon. pic.twitter.com/NDUvzrTIiJ
— European Parliament (@Europarl_EN) March 26, 2019
The players
Needless to say, this development impacts two broad groups: the platforms, such as Google and Facebook, and the content creators, such as newspapers and musicians. And it is the latter of these groups that will be most happy about this vote — they have, after all, campaigned to force platforms to accept responsibility for copyright-infringing content that is uploaded to services such as YouTube.
“This is about creating a fair and functioning market for creative works of all kinds on the Internet,” noted Robert Ashcroft, CEO at U.K.-based royalties collection body PRS for Music, in the wake of today’s vote. “It’s about making sure that ordinary people can upload videos and music to platforms like YouTube without being held liable for copyright – that responsibility will henceforth be transferred to the platforms. This is about modernizing the Internet and it’s a massive step forward for consumers and creators alike.”
Google, which has had a rough time in Europe in recent years, closed its Google News product in Spain five years ago after a local law was introduced requiring aggregators (such as Google) to pay publishers just for linking to their content. Now that a similar law is set to be rolled out across the entire European Union, we could start to see services such as Google News disappear, while there are question marks over YouTube’s position as a platform that allows anyone to upload content.
For now, though, Google — which lobbied heavily against these changes — hasn’t stated what it will do, though it did refer to the “legal uncertainty” it may cause.
“The Copyright Directive is improved but will still lead to legal uncertainty and will hurt Europe’s creative and digital economies,” a spokesperson said. “The details matter, and we look forward to working with policy makers, publishers, creators and rights holders as EU member states move to implement these new rules.”
In terms of what happens next, well, there isn’t a great deal that can stop this directive from being rolled out in the coming years — each EU country will have to write the directive into their own national laws, with a deadline set for 2021. Some countries may transpose the directive more quickly than others, depending on the degree of fervency to which each country agrees with the new rules.
We could still see some legal action, though it’s not entirely clear on what grounds and by whom it would be initiated. “Unlike the GDPR, which gave existing regulatory bodies the clear power to adjudicate and enforce that law and its ambiguities, it’s unclear who is supposed to impose consistency in the EU between, say, a harsh French regime and a potentially softer German solution, or interpret the Directive’s notoriously incoherent text,” added Danny O’Brien, international director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a statement.
“That means it will fall by default to Europe’s judicial system, and the long, slow road to a final decision by the EU’s superior court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ),” he said.
In short, we’ve probably reached the end of the road in terms of fighting these new copyright reforms, but all hope is not lost — there is some room for twists and turns in the next couple of years. That may not mean that the directive is reversed, but there will be many debates on what the actual reforms mean for internet platforms and copyright holders.