Overview of the EU Commission’s report on Copyright Law reform
Recently[1] the European Commission (the Commission) has published a report on the state of Copyright legislation in the digital market. The Commission acknowledged the multiple issues new technologies have brought to European copyright laws, and has proposed many modifications to be made to the actual laws in a short future, as well as in the long run.
There is a good chance that these new reforms will become law in the year to come, but it will nevertheless take some time for the reforms to be implemented by all the European Member States. Before worrying about when will the new rules be in effect, it is important to understand what will most likely change, and what are these changes about.
Copyright grants the author of a work many exclusive rights. Among them there is the right to reproduce your work, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform the work publicly, or display it. If someone else wants to benefit from any of these rights, he or she will need to obtain the author’s permission, which usually entails some sort of compensation. This is true in the EU as well as in the United States. However, EU copyright laws have become a little outdated, and the Commission fears that they do not provide an adequate level of protection among the different Member States, especially when it comes to deal with issues raised by new technologies. Thus, the Commission is working on new rules to adopt, which should bridge the existing gaps in EU copyright laws.
First of all, the Commission wishes to harmonize the current EU copyright rules among all the Member States. This is notably true regarding exceptions in the Copyright rules. Indeed, the Commission, through the reforms, will provide more clarity on the scope of the EU exceptions to copyright. As a matter of fact, under current EU laws there are only two mandatory exceptions: Article 5(1) of the InfoSec Directive, and Article 6 of Directive on Certain Permitted uses of Orphan Works. Any other exceptions are merely mentioned and not at all detailed, which results in a total disharmony among the different Member States in regard to applying those different exceptions.
For example, there is an exception to copyright in the field of education. Generally, a professor will not have to get a license in order to share copyright-protected work with her class, if it is for the sole purpose of teaching. However, the scope of this exception is left for every Member State to decide, which makes this exception specific to every Member State and might differ greatly from one State to the other. These disparities are working against a healthy EU economic and cultural growth.
Next, the Commission wants to adopt rules that will be better adapted to the new technologies. In a nutshell, the reforms will ensure a better access to copyright-protected content when people travel from one Member State to another[2]. Indeed, online access to works is nowadays very often territorially limited, which means that anyone buying copyright-protected content online in a Member State is too often not able to access that content if he or she moves to another state. In our modern technology age, the Commission recognizes that this situation does not make sense.
Finally, the Commission is concerned with the enforcement system, because no reform would really matter if nothing is done to make sure the new rules are followed by every Member State. To that end, the Commission will implement different enforcement systems such as a “follow-the-money” approach[3], and will also make sure that there is a fair remuneration of authors and performers, which will ease the whole reform process.
It will be very interesting to read the new rules the Commission decides to adopt. Some may fear that giving more rights to the consumers will inevitably mean fewer rights for the copyright holders, but only the application of the future laws by all Member States will show if there were actual grounds for worrying.[4]
For further information, you can contact us (see “Contact us” section) and/or consult the official communication from the EU Commission following the link bellow.
> https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/
[1] On the 9th of December 2015
[2] Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. page 4-5
[3] idem note 2: page 11
[4] https://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2015/december/eu-reforms-will-mean-fewer-rights-for-copyright-holders-says-expert/