European Parliament votes copyright reform

The European Parliament has adopted the Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market

Corina Cristea, 27.03.2019, 13:12

The European Parliament has adopted the
Directive negotiated with the EU Council presided by Romania on copyright in
the digital single market, a document long-expected by the media and the
cultural field, although severely contested by US online platforms and
supporters of freedom of expression on the Internet. It is a crucial moment for
European culture, for the digital single market and for protecting European
principles and values. This Directive will help attain our shared goal, namely
to adapt copyright rules to the 21st century. The Directive will help
the media and creativity, EU Commissioner for the Digital Market, Mariya
Gabriel, said. The EU official said the copyright directive is a key element of
the European Strategy on the Digital Single Market. Talks on this topic had
reached a stalemate the moment Romania took over the presidency of the Council
of the EU, due to controversies related to striking a balance between the
interests of authors and online platforms. Here is Radio Romania’s
correspondent in Strasbourg, Carmen Gavrila, with more:

The Directive provides for adapting
copyright exemptions and limitations to digital and cross-border constraints.
The document introduces compulsory copyright exemptions for the use of content
for online teaching activities and the preservation and online dissemination of
cultural heritage. Moreover, the document improves practices for awarding
copyright licenses in order to ensure a wider access to online content and to
achieve of functional copyright market.

After three years of heated negotiations
between the European Parliament and Member States, the document provides for
the enforcement of copyright rules and obligations in the online field as well.
The new rules provides authors and media publishers and possibility of
negotiating copyrights with Internet platforms such as YouTube and news
aggregators like Google News or Facebook. Additionally, several guarantees have
been introduced to make sure the Internet continues to observe freedom of
expression. The Directive is also aimed at facilitating copyright-marked
content for research conducted by means of text and data mining (TDM)
technologies, thus discarding a major competitive disadvantage researchers
worldwide are currently faced with. The Council of the EU is next expected to
approve the document.