On 12 September 2018 the European Parliament approved, with important tweaks, the proposal for a directive on Copyright law of the Committee on Legal Affairs of June 2018
The more debated amendments regard Articles 11 and 13.
Art. 11 on the ‘protection of press publications concerning digital uses‘ provides the necessity that each Member State ensures that the Editors (publisher of press) receive a fair and equal remuneration for digital use of their press publications by ‘information society service providers’ e.g. big users of Internet, do not fall within the category of microenterprises and small enterprises who also operate on the internet.
With respect to the text proposed by the Committee on Legal Affairs, the Parliament has considered to specify the lawfulness of the mere sharing of hyperlink connections to the articles (so-called hyperlinks). Likewise it has considered to affirm the lawfulness of private use not commercial use of the publications of a journalistic nature by each user, in line with the provisions in matters of limitations and defences of copyright law, already provided by the Infosoc Directive of 2001. An interesting change with respect to the text by the Committee on Legal Affairs regards the duration of this right, which Parliament has changed from 20 to 5 years, starting from the first day of January of the year following the date of publication.
Moreover in order to protect Authors, it has been introduced a provision whereby the Member States shall ensure them the receivement of an appropriate share of additional revenues received by the Editors for the digital use of their press publications by information society service providers.
Art. 13 relating to the ‘Use of protected content by information society service providers storing and giving access to large amounts of works and other subject-matter uploaded by their users’ has been designed to provide that big internet platforms (such as Facebook or Youtube) on which the users can have access to materials, including those protected by copyright law, activate themselves to conclude with the rightholders fair and appropriate license agreements or, ortherwise, they should ‘ensure that their services, works or other unauthorised protected material are not available’. For that purpose the service provider shall put in place a complaint and removal of the unauthorised contents.
One must bear in mind that the text which has just been approved by Parliament shall be the subject matter of debate between European Institutions and Member States. Therefore it is still uncertain whether or not it will be adopted and probably no decision will intervene before one year.