Category EU Commission

What once seemed to be a single incident turned out to be a habit: Once again it has been revealed that the EU Commission tried to hide the results of a self-requested copyright-related study because the results were not suitable. This time the study is all about "Online News Aggregation and Neighbouring Rights for News Publishers". Read more

On November 28, the Centre for International Intellectual Property Studies (CEIPI) at the University of Strasbourg has published its opinion on the European Commission's copyright reform proposal which was introduced on September 14, 2016. The opinion was written by Professor Christophe Geiger, Oleksandr Bulayenko and Giancarlo Frosio who solely focused on the proposed introduction of neighbouring rights for press publishers in EU law. In their view, the negative effects of the proposal prevail. Read more

On the 20th September 2016 the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection called on all stakeholders involved to provide their opinion on the EU Commission's proposal for a directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM-directive). A few weeks later we submitted our statement which also functions as a condensed overview on all critical aspects regarding a European ancillary copyright for press publishers. Unfortunately, at that time it had only been available in German. But now you can either download an English version (PDF) or read the full text here: Read more

Finally it is out: The draft for the new Digital Single Market Directive (DSM directive). The result is even worse than we expected it from the recently leaked preliminary draft document. Whereas the wish list of the press publishers gets ultimately fulfilled in the slightly changed final version, the public interest falls even more behind. Read more

Yesterday we informed you about most of the downsides – there are not really upsides – of the leaked draft for a new EU copyright directive. There is particularly one more thing to be added: The #creatorgate clause. Read more

Yesterday, Statewatch leaked a draft version of the Impact Assessment (IA) report for the upcoming copyright reform. Concerning the area of publisher’s rights it leaves a devastating impression. The authors of the IA suggest introducing a new ancillary/neighbouring right for news publishers with a broad scope. And they make it sound like this would be an obvious and particularly good choice.

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Today, June 15 2016, the European Commission’s “Public consultation on the role of publishers in the copyright value chain and on the 'panorama exception' (http://ancillarycopyright.eu/news/2016-03-23/commission-launches-public-consultation) ends. It introduces a new euphemism into the debate on publisher’s rights: The “neighbouring right for publishers”. Sounds harmless enough, does it not? Yet, this new angle is far from harmless. On the contrary, this “neighbouring right” is in fact more dangerous than an ancillary copyright for press publishers (AC) alone could ever be. It’s an AC on steroids.Getting rid of the infamous term “ancillary copyright for press publishers” in favour of a more generic “neighbouring right for publishers” is a crafty trick that seeks to distance this new consultation from the fundamentally failed German and Spanish approaches to copyright for press publishers. The re-phrasing aims to make us believe that a “neighbouring right” will not have massive detrimental effects on Internet communication, searching and linking and other key aspects of the digital world. Read more

Today, the European Commission has launched its public consultation on the role of publishers in the copyright value chain and on the 'panorama exception'. Everybody is welcomed to take the online survey. Although it is only available in English, French and German you can reply in any EU language. Read more

Civil society and digital rights groups are sounding the alarm about a public consultation run by the European Commission on the role of online platforms, the result of which could be new copyright rules that would effectively shut down people’s right to freely link online. The 75,000-strong Save The Link network has created an Internet Voice Tool to send feedback to the Commission as part of their consultation. Read more

The Blog IPKat leaked a draft communication on copyright reform from the European Commission "towards a modern, more European copyright framework". Alongside some positive approaches on how to reform the European copyright law, it contains the threat of changing the web as we know it today by directly attacking the hyperlink. Read more

On May 6, 2015 the EU Commission presented its much-anticipated strategy for the Digital Single Market (DSM). The communication paper has some up- but especially many downsides. Read more