Following a long and winding procedure, Directive 2019/790 on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive) and the SatCab 2.0 Directive (2019/789) were adopted last year. EU Member States started the implementation at different paces. (See CREATe and Communia’s datasets on national implementations.) Following a multi-event public consultation period in autumn 2019, the Hungarian…

The first part of this series provided an introduction to the Dutch DSM copyright directive transposition bill submitted to the Dutch parliament on 15 May (operative provisions Dutch / auto-translate, explanatory memorandum Dutch / auto-translate), and a discussion of the provisions transposing Article 15 (the press publishers’ right). Part 2 continued with an analysis of…

The first part of this post provided an introduction to the DSM copyright directive transposition bill submitted to the Dutch parliament on 15 May (operative provisions Dutch / auto-translate, explanatory memorandum Dutch / auto-translate), and a discussion of the provisions transposing Article 15 (the press publishers’ right). This Part 2 continues with an analysis of…

Introduction On 15 May, the Netherlands became the first EU member state to submit a complete DSM copyright directive transposition bill to parliament.[1] Both the timing and the content of the legislative proposal show an acute desire to avoid the risk of late or incorrect transposition.[2] In the operative provisions (auto-translate) and explanatory memorandum (auto-translate),…

Overview After fierce lobbying, European press publishers, backed by the French government, obtained the much criticized press publishers’ right (see e.g. here; here; and here) in Article 15 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive). The objective of this new right is to allow the media…

Impartial observers of the 2018-19 debates around the new European Directive on Copyright must have been mystified. They were used to the acrimonious disputes between lobbies representing conflicting short-term economic interests. No surprise there. The shock came from elsewhere; from citizen reactions, community responses and societal questions. What if these reactions, responses and questions were…

Here we have it. The first instance of regulatory divergence. The UK is leaving the European Union, and already the rules of the single market are starting to break. In response to a parliamentary question by Labour MP Jo Stevens, Intellectual Property Minister Chris Skidmore said on 21 January that the UK Government had no…

Part I of this post discussed the current position of host providers and the changes that will be brought about by Article 17. Part II addresses the major problems in relation to Article 17 and how it should be implemented to try and minimize these. The host provider privilege as a safeguard for a diverse…

On July 6, the EU adopted the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive), following heated discussions of Articles 15 (formerly 11) and 17 (formerly 13) in particular. In Germany, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to demonstrate against the planned legislation in the lead-up to the vote in the European Parliament…

Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’ was a giant hit of the last decade, a runaway success story – well almost. There is a fly in the ointment. Sami Chokri (a.k.a. Sami Switch) is claiming Sheeran and his fellow songwriters infringed his copyright, copying part of the chorus of ‘Oh Why’. You can hear the two…