Creators urge EU member states to implement the Copyright Directive

By Emmanuel Legrand

European Union member states have been urged to implement rapidly the Copyright Directive in the EU Single Digital Market in order to continue to “deliver on promises made to creators,” according to Alfons Karabuda, President of ECSA, the European Composer & Songwriter Alliance.

  Speaking at the organisation's Creators Conference 2020 in Brussels on February 3, Karabuda said creators had a lot to be grateful since the EU “delivered on its promises” to support creators by adopting the Copyright Directive, but now, he added, the onus is on members states to do the same. “The Directive is not yet a reality and the ball is in the court of EU member states,” said Karabuda. “Member States should see the opportunities for authors with the Copyright Directive.”

  Alluding to the situation in the UK, where Boris Johnson's government announced in January that it was not planning to implement the Directive, Karabuda said: “I have to say I am also a bit sad today, not only because of Brexit but also because of the recent decision [by the British government] not to implement the Directive. Our British friends have helped us improve that Directive so why should British creators not benefit from these achievements? British creators should benefit from the same protections as all creators in the EU.”

Regulating streaming platforms

  “Transposing the Directive is key,” echoed keynote speaker Jean-Noël Tronc, CEO of French rights society SACEM and Vice-President of the board of European authors societies' organisation GESAC. Tronc said that while France took the lead in being the first country to transpose the neighbouring right for news publishers, “some giants still resist.” 

  The next frontier for Tronc is the need for more regulation of streaming platforms “that more and more behave as producer and editors of content and have an impact on what consumers listen to. They are the media of the future, and soon they will also be doing anything form production to distribution of content.”

  Tronc noted that the new Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) called for SVOD services to play 30% of European content, but nothing similar exists for music. “The AVMS Directive has a provision on European content, but how come we don't have that for music?” he asked.

Achieving fairness

  The implementation of the Copyright Directive was one of the two main topics discussed during the conference with buy-outs. At the session 'Where are EU member states on closing the value gap?', former German Member of the European Parliament Helga Trupel, who was a strong supporter of the Directive, said the copyright reform was “part of the whole picture of what do we do with the freedom of platforms. If you want to bring them back into society, you need good tools. This copyright reform says there is an incentive to license and having discussions between platforms, rights holders, and CMOs, and that they should do licensing agreements with monopolies.”

  For Trupel, the Directive “is not about censorship” but about “fairness in market, sovereignty in Europe and certainty for users, as well as “making platforms, the richest companies in the world, responsible for what they do.” She expects, however, a continued resistance from digital platforms to the Directive: “We have this law and it has to be implemented and it will be implemented, but I think we will have the same fight we had at European level at national level.”

  Sarah Jacquier, the Policy and legal officer at the French Ministry of Culture, said France is advancing in the implementation of the Copyright Directive, first with neighbouring rights, but also with Article 17, which tackles the value gap, by making it mandatory for ISPs to obtain licenses from rights holders or take down content, through a new law that will be presented soon before the Parliament.

Working with stakeholders

  “Reaching Article 17 was a huge achievement, but there is still a lot of work ahead,” she explained. “Now that we have it we have to make it work, and it is a responsibility for all of us. We tried to stay as close as possible to the text which is already detailed and also add clarity in the text. We need flexibility but also clarity for stakeholders.”

  For Marco Giorello, Head of the Copyright Unit at the European Commission's DG CONNECT, “we should be proud of what we have done with Article 17. It would have been difficult to do better, and Article 17 is in quite good shape considering all the pressure.”

  Giorello said that at this stage, he's only seen two drafts on Article 17, one from France and the other from the Netherlands. “It's still early days and a lot of discussions are going on on Article 17,” he noted. “We are having regular discussions [with member states]. We have a committee that gathers the views of member states. A lot more will happen in the coming months. It is very early to give trends.”

Setting the scene

  Giorello said that considering the high level of opposition against the Directive, the implementation process is going on quite smoothly. He elaborated, “I think there is a clear obligation to implement the Directive and the discussions that we are having with member states are constructive. Now we are largely past [the opposition to the Directive]. Sweden is a good example. In the end the government voted against it and now Sweden is one of the most engaged country. Of course, let's see in one year when comes out of it, but the temperature went down a lot and everybody is playing the game.”

  For Giorello, the Directive is “setting the scene for other countries that will look at the issues.” He added: “We have many more question about the Directive from the US government, the Canadian government, the Japanese government. It is one of these areas, like data protection, where Europe took the leadership with something brave and something new.”