Category Neighbouring right
Beware: The “neighbouring right for publishers” is an ancillary copyright on steroids! – To the potential consequences of a general neighbouring right for publishers 15/06/2016 by Till Kreutzer
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