Europe approves tough new digital copyright position

The European Parliament has voted to adopt a position on copyright rules that opponents inevitably fear will break the internet.

This is an incremental, but significant step towards Europe implementing laws that will impose new conditions on internet companies to compensate rights holders when they share their copyrighted material. The position was initially rejected back in July but in true EU style they decided to keep voting on it again until it went the right way.

“I am very glad that despite the very strong lobbying campaign by the internet giants, there is now a majority in the full house backing the need to protect the principle of fair pay for European creatives,” said Eurocrat Axel Voss.

“There has been much heated debate around this directive and I believe that Parliament has listened carefully to the concerns raised. Thus, we have addressed concerns raised about innovation by excluding small and micro platforms or aggregators from the scope.

“I am convinced that once the dust has settled, the internet will be as free as it is today, creators and journalists will be earning a fairer share of the revenues generated by their works, and we will be wondering what all the fuss was about.”

“Discussions between the co-legislators can now start on a legislative proposal which is a key element of the Digital Single Market strategy and one of the priorities for the European Commission,” said Eurocrats Andrus Ansip and Mariya Gabriel in a joint statement.

“Our aim for this reform is to bring tangible benefits for EU citizens, researchers, educators, writers, artists, press and cultural heritage institutions and to open up the potential for more creativity and content by clarifying the rules and making them fit for the digital world. At the same time, we aim to safeguard free speech and ensure that online platforms – including 7,000 European online platforms – can develop new and innovative offers and business models.

“The Commission stands ready to start working with the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, so that the directive can be approved as soon as possible, ideally by the end of 2018. We are fully committed to working with the co-legislators in order to achieve a balanced and positive outcome enabling a true modernisation of the copyright legislation that Europe needs.”

The usual suspects are appalled at this development with the saveyourinternet.eu site featuring the following statement: “The European Parliament blatantly disregarded your thousands of emails, calls and messages and adopted a horrible version of Article 13 on 12 September. But the battle against Article 13 isn’t over: we must now ask the EU governments to stand up for our rights!”

At its core this seems to be about sharing stuff on the internet and to what extent the owner of the stuff being shared should get some kind of royalty payment every time it’s done. On one hand the internet has wrecked industries like music and journalism by making it so difficult for them to charge people for consuming their products, but on the other the genie is out of the bottle and such sharing is endemic. Either way this debate seems likely to rage for some time yet.