EU’s copyright crackdown
Will the changes be the internet’s darkest day or something to sing about?
It was a bitter battle that pitted the likes of Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox and James Blunt against some of Silicon Valley’s mightiest companies, including Google and Facebook.
The fight saw hashtags trending globally and celebrities campaigning in Brussels.
Death threats were even allegedly sent to politicians from those campaigning against the proposals.
On March 26, a near-three-year campaign to revamp Europe’s copyright laws for the first time in 20 years finally reached its conclusion.
How those changes might affect artists in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere outside Europe remains to be seen.
In a packed hall in Strasbourg, 348 euro-MPs backed the controversial copyright directive that will for the first time force video sharing platforms such as Google-owned YouTube to pay musicians, entertainers and other content creators for using their material.
The decision is one of the biggest ever changes in internet regulation and will have enormous consequences for some of the world’s largest technology companies, who are likely to suffer a dent in earnings.
But many, such as Axel Voss, the German euro-MP who led the copyright debate and who is rumoured to have received a bomb threat in the run-up to the vote, could barely contain their delight.
“The new digital copyright protection finally ends the Wild West on the internet, in which the rights holders are often undermined,” said Voss, heaving a sigh of relief after the result was counted out.
“How ‘Google and Co.’ technically implement our specifications is ultimately their task.”
The European Commission began reviewing the copyright rules two years ago in an attempt to protect an industry that is worth more than a trillion dollars a year, accounting for 11.65 million jobs and 6.8 per cent of the EU economy.
These copyright reform proposals would for the first time force internet companies to police their content and pay artists for work displayed on their sites.
The most controversial of the proposals, articles 11 and 13 (later renamed as article 17), propose a “link tax” that will force information aggregators such as Google News or social networks such as Facebook to pay for featuring content linked from news outlets, and would require that websites actively filter content for breaches of copyright.
BBC News is among those reporting that specific tweaks to the law made earlier this year make gifs, memes and similar expressions safe “for purposes of quotation, criticism, review, caricature, parody and pastiche.”
Euro-MP for London Mary Honeyball said: “There’s no problem with memes at all. This directive was never intended to stop memes and mash-ups.
“I think that’s doom-mongering. People who carry out their business properly have nothing to worry about at all.”
Although they have been softened since the vote in September last year, article 17 could still prove painful for the tech giants affected.
Getting the reform approved was a victory for publishers and artists, who argued that for too long, technology giants including Google and YouTube had made money off of artists’ work without compensating them.
Ironically, it also represents a victory for the U.K., which was instrumental early on in applying pressure within the EU for greater platform liability, despite its subsequent decision to quit the EU with Brexit — a move still very much up in the air.
But for the likes of Jimmy Wales, the vote was a bitter blow. The founder of Wikipedia took to Twitter after the vote to say that the decision “empowered monopolistic practices” and was a blow for internet freedom.
German euro-MP Julia Reda, who campaigned strongly against the reform, also claimed it was a “dark day for internet freedom” as euro-MPs refused to consider a last-ditch bid to amend the reform to exclude the link tax and compulsory content filters.
“The new copyright law as it stands threatens a free internet as we know it,” she said. “Algorithms cannot distinguish between actual copyright infringements and the legal reuse of content for purposes such as parody.”
Tim Berners Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, joined Wales in signing an open letter against the move last summer, while musician and Fugees co-founder Wyclef Jean has also spoken out against the reform. In September, he visited Strasbourg and urged euro-MPs to “embrace and improve the internet, rather than attempt to block and hinder it.” In a guest column for Politico, he said he used to worry about fans uploading versions of his work to YouTube. “It turns out I didn’t understand user-generated content back then. We started keeping up these user videos to see what would happen. Subscribers to my YouTube channel increased. More fans were checking out my older work. And all of it meant a new source of revenue for me.” Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry later attacked his remarks, arguing Jean was supporting a company that would take away the livelihood of many of his peers.
These proposals, which critics claim were “watered down” after intense lobbying from technology companies, have largely failed to please anyone. Google, which was one of the main targets of the initial push for widespread copyright change, claimed that while the directive has “improved,” it will “still lead to legal uncertainty and will hurt Europe’s creative and digital economies.”
U.K. technology trade association techUK said the European
The new digital copyright protection finally ends the Wild West on the internet, in which the rights holders are often undermined. How ‘Google and Co.’ technically implement our specifications is ultimately their task. Axel Voss
Parliament “failed to strike the right balance between protecting copyright and ensuring freedom of expression.”
Experts predict that technology giants will start to pay their dues from 2021 if there are no further delays. The U.K., which was the first to lobby for a change in copyright, says it plans to introduce the laws alongside the rest of Europe even after Brexit. Regardless of whether the U.K. acts, Europe is sending a clear signal to the technology elite.
It’s not yet clear how or whether the EU changes would affect similar issues in Canada and the U.S. Technology website techcrunch.com notes that European copyright law has often heralded changes to U.S. copyright legislation. It was Europe that in 1993 first extended the term of copyright protection to 70 years from the death of the author (from 50 years), a move the U.S. matched for certain works in 1998. Canada remains at 50 years in most cases.
European countries were also the first signatories to the most important international treaty on copyright, the Berne Convention, which many countries signed in 1886 and now includes 176 state parties. Canada joined in 1928 but the U.S. did not sign on until 1989.
Voss said the new legislation was designed to protect people’s livelihoods.
“This directive is an important step toward correcting a situation which has allowed a few companies to earn huge sums of money without properly remunerating the thousands of creatives and journalists whose work they depend on,” he said.
“It helps make the internet ready for the future, a space which benefits everyone, not only a powerful few.”