[ad_1]
The European Parliament rejected Thursday a reform of copyright, criticized by the GAFA, but supported by artists.
The European Parliament rejected Thursday the European copyright reform, a text strongly defended by creators, artists or publishers of the press, but to which the digital giants (Gafa) or activists of the freedom on the Internet were fiercely opposed. Of the 627 MEPs present in the Chamber, 318 voted against the text, 278 for and 31 abstained.
The aim was to modernize the last copyright legislation dating back to 2001, without taking into account the digital revolution. Article 13 of the Directive made it particularly responsible for the owner of the platform (such as Youtube, Facebook or Twitter) "to ensure the proper functioning of the agreements concluded with the rightholders with regard to the use of their works or other protected objects ". The platform, and not the average user of the platform, would become directly responsible for the copyright infringements it hosts.
Digital companies opposed to this text
The GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) and other digital companies fought against this text. According to these companies, the European Parliament would seek, with this law, to regulate the content published on their platforms, which would be a serious infringement of the freedoms of Internet users. 167 digital companies had published an open letter calling on the European Parliament not to vote this text, to "defend the freedom and accessibility of the internet".
In order to avoid any copyright infringement by Internet users, hosting platforms should have monitored, and carefully filter each content posted. "The directive would threaten freedom online and impose new filters, barriers and restrictions to access the web," said Wikipedia Spain in a statement on July 4. The online encyclopedia, standing up against this law, has issued protest warnings on its Spanish, Italian or Polish websites in recent days. To limit the excesses, however, Parliament had added to the directive a pbadage for the respect of a "balance between the fundamental rights of users and rights holders", which does not satisfy digital platforms.
The question of the limit of copyright was also raised. Are montages, hijackings or gifs punished for non-respect of copyright? Here again, the European Parliament amended the directive, ensuring that "non-infringing works must remain available".
The Artistic World Disappointed
The limits of this text were counterbalanced, in artists, not the desire to see their work better pay on the digital. The directive would indeed have forced online platforms to protect musicians, singers or videographers who see their productions leaking on the web without, sometimes, recover any benefit. "If we can not live on our works, we, creators, are condemned to disappear" badures a tribune, published in Le Monde Tuesday, July 3. It has been signed by more than 70 French artists – including Julien Doré, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Oxmo Puccino and Abd Al Malik – for whom the protection of creators "contributes to the proper functioning of our democracy".
Chapter 3 of the Directive, entitled "fair contractual remuneration of authors, performers and performers", established standards of remuneration, and in particular legislated the right for a claimant to claim additional remuneration "when the remuneration initially agreed upon is grossly small in relation to the revenues and profits subsequently derived from the exploitation of the works ".
In the same vein, the directive provided in Article 11 for the creation of a new right for newspaper publishers. The latter had with this text the power to get paid for using their production on different internet platforms.
Source link
