Kamporden have been hard in the last six months of battle: new EU rules on the death of the internet or the death of artistic activities and traditional media?
The final compromise negotiations dragged on for several hours on Wednesday before the parliament, the commission and the member states announced that they have reached an agreement.
”this Settlement represents an important step towards correcting a condition that has allowed a few companies to earn huge amounts of money without having to replace the thousands of creatives and journalists whose work they rely on”, says the German christian democrat Axel Voss, who has brought forward the EU parliament, in a press release.
”To finally have a modern copyright law for the whole EU is a great achievement that has been needed for a long time”, says Andrus Ansip, the european commissioner for the digital market, in a press release.
is critical to the decision.
– Unfortunately, so is shooting EUROPE in the foot with this decision. During the last legislative period, the EU has updated several laws for the better, but this is completely the opposite. Where, under the pretext of saving the copyright holders make the internet into cable tv, ” says Fredrick Federley, Mep for the Centre party.
Even the Conservatives Mep, Gunnar Hökmark is critical.
” It was a bad result. The EU needs a modern copyright directive that encourages digital innovation and creative forms to take part of the culture. This proposal mould the responsibility on to the internet and adds a far too much of a burden on the platforms, which in the end affects the users in the form of uppladdningsfilter and limited range.
at the beginning of the 00’s. The new rules aim to strengthen copyright protection online, and will provide the source maker greater compensation when their work is used. The proponents believe that big platforms like Facebook, Google and Youtube has not needed to take enough responsibility for what’s posted on their platforms.
According to the settlement agreement, they will in the future have to pay fees for that kind of linking.
at the same time can the controls come to mean more costs, for instance for smaller companies, who need to invest in order to prevent copyrighted material is distributed through their platform. Opponents have also expressed a concern that it restricts the freedom of expression on the net.
to prohibit the part of the so-called memes or gifbilder. Nor does the dissemination of excerpts from journalistic texts – so long as they are ”very short”. Non-commercial sites like Wikipedia are exempted and the requirements should be kept a little lower for start-up companies.
the Debate went on pre-het, in particular if the rules for the compensation, if any, by linking to copyrighted material, and demands on, for example, automated filters. Links will be shared freely with just the ”short snippets”, and the parties have not landed in any filterkrav.
However, they agree that journalists should be allowed to take part of the copyright-related income, for example, when the articles are linked via other platforms like Facebook or Google function, which then also makes the advertising revenue linked to the material.
“We are afraid that the law may affect innovation online, companies and limit the nätfriheten in Europe,” says Christian Borggreen, vice-president of the lobby group CCIA, whose members include, among others, Google and Facebook.
social media activists and the large and small platforms and sites.
”the Proposals would restrict our ability to actively participate in the network and, instead, promote the major mediekonglomeratens business models”, claims the German-Swedish “pirate” and the EU-mep Julia Reda.
the Proposal must now be approved formally by the council of europe and the EUROPEAN parliament before the EU elections in may.
