Get Prepared For A Passel Of EU Legislation On Copyright And Related Rights

This week several committees in the European Parliament voted on a pile of copyright-related dossiers, and in some instances the steps taken were really small. But the issues include controversial aspects in the legislative drafts on copyright review, broadcasting content and digital content, such as an obligation for providers to monitor third party content, intermediary liability and website blocking.

 

Welcomed by digital rights organisations, the LIBE (Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs) Committee yesterday went along with the proposal of Rapporteur Michal Boni to skip a general obligation for providers to automatically monitor content in the ongoing update of the EU Copyright Regulation. The ominous Article 13 now has been voted no by four EP committees, and there is a tie if it should be introduced or not. But has still to pass the lead committee for the much-debated and delayed reform, the JURI (Legal Affairs) Committee. There is still time for those lobbying for or against the monitoring obligation, as the vote will only take place next year, expected on 24-25 January.

The LIBE vote was also praised by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA). CCIA Senior Manager Maud Sacquet, in a statement, welcomed it, pointing out: “This opinion rejects the European Commission’s proposal to undermine the liability of Internet intermediaries and to implement mandatory filtering systems for user-uploaded content.”

Another contentious point, the introduction of a new ancillary copyright for news snippets also is still being fought over. A nice overview on the committee votes was presented by MEP Julia Reda here. Reda at the same time warns that website blocking proposals are not limited to the copyright dossiers, but instead a planned regulation on Cooperation of consumer protection agencies includes a paragraph on content blocking.

Very contentious also was today’s vote on the “Rules on the exercise of copyright and related rights applicable to certain online transmissions of broadcasting organisations and retransmissions of television and radio programmes.”

In essence an attempt to ease the cross-border access to the content of broadcasting organisations by adopting the country-of-origin principle already established for broadcasting content transmitted via satellite, European movie industry associations rose to arms. The cut into potential geographical licensing revenues could amount to 15-20 percent of a movie budget, said the boss of the German Producer Alliance, Christoph Palmer in an interview with German Daily FAZ. The majority of committee members gave in to the pressure and limited the scope of the regulation to news content and content produced by the broadcasters, excluding third party content, co-produced content and sports events. Whether the limited scope will do much to prevent geo-blocking remains to be seen once finalised.

“We are missing the opportunity to create a European public sphere,” Rapporteur Tiemo Woelken said after the vote.

Geo-blocking was also the topic of so-called trilogue negotiations between Council, Commission and Parliament this week, and there, too, the scope was reduced to reach an agreement. Unjustified geo-blocking of digital copyrighted content is not in the draft legislative text. Instead, it is mainly about shopping. Better protection for consumers when buying digital content also is the goal of a draft directive adopted by the JURI today. While securing remedy and warranty mechanisms for digital content online shoppers, a point applauded by digital rights activists was that data as payment was rejected by the draft directive.

And on Monday, the JURI Committee also adopted the final resolution that will allow the Union to finally ratify the 2013 Marrakesh Treaty (Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled), providing copyright exemptions for visually impaired people.

 

Image Credits: European Parliament