From: Electronic Frontier Foundation
After months of study, European regulators have finally released the full and final proposal on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, and unfortunately it’s full of ideas that will hurt users and the platforms on which they rely, in Europe and around the world. We’ve already written a fair bit about leaked version of this proposal, but it’s worth taking a deeper dive into a particular provision, euphemistically described as sharing of value. This provision, Article 13 of the Directive, requires platform for user-generated content to divert some of their revenue to copyright holders who, the Commission claims, otherwise face a hard time in monetizing their content online. We strongly support balanced and sensible mechanisms that help ensure that artists get paid for their work. But this proposal is neither balanced nor sensible.
Article 13 is short enough that its key first paragraph can be reproduced in its entirety here:
Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers. Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate. The service providers shall provide rightholders with adequate information on the functioning and the deployment of the measures, as well as, when relevant, adequate reporting on the recognition and use of the works and other subject-matter.
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