Having established in part 1 of this blog post that Article 17 will place significant economic burdens on platforms large and small, and that those burdens create incentives for platforms to further impact the freedom of expression and information of users, we go on to examine in part 2 whether those burdens constitute a restriction…
The risk of mandatory upload filters for freedom of expression and information online has been at the core of criticisms of Article 17 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive). This risk is evident from numerous examples of restrictions on legitimate speech resulting from the voluntary use of such…
As we enter a new year, we would like to take this opportunity to pass on our best wishes for 2021 to all of our readers, as well as reflect on developments in copyright over the past year. Despite its challenges, last year was another busy one in the copyright world, with ongoing European copyright…
On Monday, the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture held a public hearing on the implementation of Article 17 of the Copyright Directive. As part of this meeting, the Ministry outlined its proposal for a user rights-preserving “blocking procedure” that substantially deviates from all other implementation proposals that we have seen so far. The procedure…
Transposing Directives into national laws is a delicate balancing exercise. The potential pitfalls multiply when the Directive’s EU Official Journal translations present inaccuracies, leading to confusion at the Member State level. The translation errors in Article 17 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (DCDSM) form the core…
On Tuesday, November 10, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU or Court) heard case C-401/19. This case is a request by the Polish government to annul the filtering obligation contained in Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive on the grounds that it will lead to censorship…
As I posted previously on this blog (here), French press publishers’ unions and the news agency Agence France Presse (‘AFP’) filed a successful request for an interim injunction against Google before the French Competition Authority, in their battle to obtain remuneration for online uses of their publications (Decision 20-MC-01 of 9 April 2020). Google had been manoeuvring…
Part 1 of this blog post introduced the claim by rightsholders and some other commentators that Article 17 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive) is a mere clarification of existing Court of Justice case-law on communication to the public and intermediary liability. The second part of this blog…
EU Member States are currently grappling with the task of implementing the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive) into national law. The European Commission is preparing its guidance to help national legislators make sense of its most controversial part, Article 17. These legislative developments have prompted a series of remarkably similar…
As previously noted, on 18 June 2020 Hungary became the second Member State of the European Union to – partially – implement Directive 2019/790 on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive). Under ordinary circumstances, the implementation of Art 5 of the CDSM Directive in Hungary would have been carried out along with the…
