Category quotations

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, 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