News media handed setback in European copyright battle
It’s a fight nearly as old as the Internet.
On one side are news organizations, broadcasters and music companies that want to control how their content spreads across the Web, and to be paid more for it. On the other are tech companies such as Facebook and Google, which argue that they funnel viewers and advertising revenue to media outlets, and free-speech advocates, who say that regulating the Internet would set a dangerous precedent and limit access to information.
That battle flared up Thursday in Europe. Two powerful industries faced off
— technology against media, platforms against publishers — in an unusually aggressive lobbying campaign in the European Parliament over a bill that would impose some of the world’s strictest copyright laws, which would have required tech companies to filter out unlicensed content and pay for its use.
On this occasion, tech prevailed; the proposal was voted down.
The decision came during broader efforts in Brussels to rein in tech giants. European regulators have already brought in tough new privacy rules and are considering enhancing them. They have hit Silicon Valley companies with hefty antitrust fines, and are investigating them over their tax practices and handling of data. And like elsewhere in the world, they are increasingly skeptical of the argument made by Internet companies that they are simply impartial platforms that cannot be held responsible for what is posted on their pages.
“Making content available on the Internet does not come without responsibility,” said Eleonora Rosati, an associate professor on intellectual-property law at the University of Southampton’s law school in England, who has been tracking the bill. “Rights holders want to control how their content is made available, shared and indexed.”
But after a well-coordinated campaign by companies including Facebook, Google, Reddit and Wikipedia, as well as by proponents of an open Internet, the European Parliament on Thursday rejected the proposed
copyright law. Though lawmakers can still revise the bill and call another vote, the result is a blow to media companies that had believed that, if ever there was a good time to impose tougher rules on tech giants, this was it.
Media businesses like Axel Springer of Germany have become frustrated because even as their content has spread online, it is platforms like YouTube, owned by Google, and Facebook that have grown into advertising powerhouses on the back of the material.
Those media companies have been seeking a rewrite of Europe’s copyright laws that would give them more power to restrict how their content is distributed. They also cited concerns that Silicon Valley was not playing a strong enough gatekeeper role when it came to curtailing hate speech, violent extremism and fake news.
Supporters of the bill argued that stricter copyright laws would give content creators more leverage against Internet behemoths such as Google. Publishers have long complained that such companies profit from the work of others.
“The real issue is Google’s market power,” said Lionel Bently, a law professor at the University of Cambridge who focuses on copyright.
Influential policymakers in Brussels such as the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, have seemed receptive to such arguments. A proposal was put forward to require websites to use filtering technology to block unlicensed content from being posted and to obligate them to pay fees for news articles and other material posted online.
The proposed rules would have added up to a sweeping
change to copyright law.
Operators of websites have long been protected from liability when unlicensed content is posted by a user. Instead, they are required only to remove infringing material once it is brought to their attention. In effect, if someone posts a movie clip on YouTube, or shares the text of an article on Reddit, those websites are not held legally liable.
The new European proposals would put more responsibility on website owners, creating a potentially costly problem for sites that depend on user-generated material.
The most contentious provision of the plans would require websites to use filtering software to screen such content before it was posted. YouTube already has a system to weed out unlicensed material, but the European rules would have gone further by requiring others to use similar tools. Another requirement, favored by book and news publishers, would prevent websites from using pieces of their content without authorization.
Critics of the bill argued that it would lead to many unforeseen consequences, warning that it could even affect satirical content or the use of images in Internet memes. They said it would restrict what was available online, and some described a provision requiring permission before websites used publishers’ content as a “link tax.”
“There’s no way that those algorithmic filters are going to be able to decide that something is fair use, parody, a meme or a mash-up,” said Danny O’Brien, international director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights nonprofit group that opposed the bill.