A piece of proposed EU legislation has for many months now included drastic changes to the Union's copyright laws. Feedback from industry lobbyists looks very much like it is adopted uncritically to the exclusion of other interests. This is especially noticeable in what has been going on with Articles 11 and 13 of the Council on the European Commission's proposal for a Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market [2016/0280(COD)]. CopyBuzz summarizes some of the more salient points regarding press publisher's rights (Article 11) and upload/censorship filters (Article 13) identified in the latest set of proposals.
Currently it is Bulgaria's turn to head the Council of the European Union, a position that rotates every six months among EU member states. One of the responsibilities of that position is to oversee the Council's work on EU legislation. However, with the recent rotation, the copyright situation looks grimmer rather than gaining a respite.
See CopyBuzz : Compromises on (c) are clearly no longer on the agenda.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Thursday March 29 2018, @04:47PM (1 child)
The author of the copybuzz article is a lobbyist [n-square.eu] herself [eburon.nl]. The organization behind copybuzz, copyrightforcreativity.eu, does not name an applicant on the whois information. It is hosted by a US-based web hosting company.
The article 11 linked to [parlament.gv.at] in the copybuzz article does not correspond to all of the criticisms the author makes. There is no mentioning of a deletion of the presumption approach, no definition of press publication, nor any mentioning of a carve out for 'users'.
The article fails to mention the following para:
Or in other words, news events -- reported on by multiple sources, hence non-exclusive -- are not protected by copyright.
Finally, the article does not mention the real source of the link either: an email campaign started by politico.eu on March 25th.
I did not proceed to check her statements on article 13: I'll leave that to somebody else.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Thursday March 29 2018, @05:16PM
Note that politico.eu is owned by politico.com and Axel Springer SE [wikipedia.org].
Why, oh why, would Europe's largest publishing house, owner of numerous newspapers and magazines, pay a Brussels' lobbying firm to publish critical articles on pending copyright legislation?