Category European Union

The way is clear for the final vote of the European Parliament on the copyright reform. On 27 February, a majority of its Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) voted in favour of the negotiated compromise. However, EU citizens' criticism of the plan is growing louder and louder - just before the European elections. Read more

Representatives of the Member States in the European Council have not yet managed to reach a compromise. The trilogue negotiations are therefore continuing to drag on indefinitely. That gives cause for hope. Read more

Originally, the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council wanted to finalise the text of the planned Copyright Directive by the end of 2018. However, this goal was clearly missed so that negotiations were resumed last week. Read more

Today, the European Parliament held its second vote on copyright in the digital single market and it took the worst possible outcome. Amendments to delete article 11 altogether or to alter it into a rule of legal presumption were rejected by a large majority. Instead, MEP Axel Voss's latest proposal for an ancillary copyright for press publishers was adopted. The same goes for his proposal that aims to introduce upload filters in the EU. Read more

Last Wednesday on June 20, the European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) voted on the Commission's proposal for a new copyright directive. Unfortunately, the ancillary copyright for press publishers as stipulated in article 11 was adopted with only little suggested changes. But it looks like this has not been the final vote yet. Read more

Today, the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) has finally voted on its opinion on the Commission's proposal for a new copyright directive. While problematic provisions for mandatory content filtering have been tackled, the Committee did not take any stand when it came to the ancillary copyright for press publishers aka the link tax. Read more

The European Commission regularly makes use of surveys to gather a wide array of opinions from various stakeholders. But when the result does not meet the preconceived view, its relevance will simply be denied, as it seems. Read more

Yesterday, I was invited to speak at a public debate in the Press Club in Brussels. Main topic was the Commission’s proposal on the ancillary copyright. What I heard was a bunch of lies and a good measure of ignorance. Read more

EU-Commissioner Günther Oettinger gave a speech last Monday at the annual meeting of the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers (BDZV). There he explicitly called on the publishing houses to create more buzz in favor of his proposed ancillary copyright for press publishers/neighbouring right/link tax meaning he wants them to shush down their online magazines. 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 16th June 2015, the European Parliament's legal affairs committee will vote on the report on the review of EU copyright rules. The report's author, MEP Julia Reda, calls on everybody to support her (good) work. Read more

Last week, Markus Keßler from Futurezone.at interviewed EU-Commissioner Günther Oettinger. Besides geoblocking, net neutrality and data preservation, the ancillary copyright for press publishers was also a topic on the list. Read more

Günther Oettinger, the European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, had a talk with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (F.A.Z.) about his approach on reforming European copyright. Among numerous other things, Oettinger also commented on an ancillary copyright for press publishers in the EU. Read more

Julia Reda, MEP for the German Pirate Party and Vice President of the Greens/EFA group, has released the draft report evaluating 2001's EU copyright directive (InfoSoc). She is a member of the Committee on Legal Affairs of the EU Parliament and was elected rapporteur on this particular issue in May. Read more

In an open letter to Günther Oettinger, European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, the European Copyright Society (ECS) calls for a sweeping reform of copyright law. Read more