Controversial EU law on copyright approved

THE European Parliament yesterday approved a controversial EU copyright law that hands more power to news and record companies against Internet giants like Google and Facebook.

Backing the draft were traditional media, in urgent search of income at a time when web users shun newspapers and television and advertising revenue is siphoned away by online platforms.

European lawmakers were sharply divided on the copyright issue, with both sides engaging in one of the biggest rounds of lobbying that the EU has ever seen.

But, despite uncertainty ahead of the vote, MEPs meeting in Strasbourg ended up passing the draft law with 438 votes in favor, 226 against, and 39 abstentions.

The text MEPs settled on compromised on some of the ways news organizations will charge companies for links to content, with platforms free to use “a few words” of text, according to an amendment.

It also slightly watered down a proposal for so-called upload filters that will make platforms — such as YouTube or Facebook — liable for copyright breaches and force them to automatically delete content by violators.

EU commissioners Andrus Ansip and Mariya Gabriel, who proposed the reform, dubbed the vote “a strong and positive signal and an essential step to achieving our common objective of modernizing the copyright rules in the European Union.”

The draft had been fiercely resisted by US tech giants as well as online freedom activists. They fear that automatic filters to prevent users sharing content subject to copyright could be misused to censor political messages or other forms of free expression.

MEPs can now start negotiations with the European Council representing the 28 member states which had already reached a compromise on the issue in May.