In May 2019 right after the adoption of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, the Polish Government initiated a legal challenge before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) requesting the annulment of (parts of) Article 17. The Polish challenge claims that the application of the filtering obligations contained in Article…

In this new series we will be updating readers every three months on developments in EU copyright law. This will include Court of Justice (CJEU) and General Court judgments, Advocate Generals’ (AG) opinions, and important policy developments.   The end of 2020 Since this is the first issue of our round up, we have also…

The Directive on Copyright in a Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive, see here and here for an overview) is due to be implemented by the Member States of the European Union by 7 June 2021. The 27 Member States have struggled with transposing the CDSM Directive and have so far produced various transposition drafts, many of…

Today, the French Government presents the second report on content recognition tools on digital sharing platforms commissioned by the Conseil Supérieur de la Propriété Littéraire et Artistique (High Council for literary and artistic property – CSPLA). The new CSPLA report, authored by Jean-Philippe Mochon (who had also authored the previous report on content recognition tools),…

Part 1 of this post summarised the conclusion of the European Commission’s stakeholder dialogue on the implementation of Article 17 and the presentation of the German proposal in a user rights preserving way. It concluded with the Commission’s targeted consultation on the implementation of Article 17 which gave a first glimpse of the Commission’s own…

It is less than five months until the implementation deadline for the 2019 Copyright in the digital single market directive (DSM Directive). So far, the pace of implementation has been relatively slow (no doubt at least in part due to the massive challenges that governments and the cultural sector are facing as a result of…

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…