Tuesday, July 03, 2018

Proposed EU copyright legislation to be voted on July 5 (updated)

I don't follow EU copyright legislation closely, so these proposed rule changes have snuck up on me.  According to IPPro The Internet:
Article 11 brings a so-called ‘link tax’ that would allow publishers to secure licence fees from search engines and other intermediaries who use their content for up to 20 years from publication.

Article 13 shifts the burden of responsibility for copyright infringement to the platforms, forcing them to readjust their content protection mechanisms and take down user content at the request of rights owners.
From what I'm reading, Article 13 could case platforms to review content and automatically delete content they think is a duplicate. Since the review would be done by machines, content that is legal could be automatically deleted.  That review process could also slow down the sharing of content.  One place, where I could see that being a problem, is at a live event, where many people are sharing photos online. 

The European Parliament will vote on these on 5 July.  People in Europe are encouraged to contact their Members of European Parliament (MEPs) to express their concern.


Update (July 5): The BBC has reported that the MEPs have rejected Article 13 and they will take up this issue again in September. (The vote was 318 votes to 278, with 31 abstentions.) News reports framed this as a battle between creatives/artists and the technology industry, with each side making impassioned pleas.

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