The European Parliament, the Council of the EU and the Commission have come to a political agreement to make the copyright rules fit for digital era in Europe. This will bring tangible benefits to all creative sectors including the press, researchers, educators, cultural heritage institutions, and citizens.
The agreement will need to be confirmed by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU in the coming weeks.
The new Directive reinforces the position of European authors and should give them:
- More control over the use of their content uploaded by users on platforms and remuneration for such use.
- The principle of an appropriate and proportionate remuneration for authors will be laid down for the first time in European copyright law.
- Authors will have transparent information of how their works are exploited by publishers.
- If publishers fail to exploit the rights authors have transferred to them, authors will be allowed to revoke those rights.
- European press publishers will enjoy a new right, which aims to facilitate the way they negotiate how their content is re-used on online platforms. It will give journalists the right to receive a greater share of the revenues generated by the online uses of press publications. This right will not affect citizens and individual users, who will continue to enjoy and share news hyperlinks as they do today.
The new Directive will ensure wider access to knowledge by simplifying copyright rules in the areas of text and data mining for research and other purposes, education and preservation of cultural heritage:
- Research organizations, universities and other users will be able to make the most of the increasing number of publications and data available online for research or other purposes as they will benefit from a copyright exception to carry out text and data mining on large sets of data. This will also enhance the development of data analytics and artificial intelligence in Europe.
- Students and teachers will be able to use copyrighted materials in online courses, including across borders, for the purposes of illustration for teaching.
- The preservation of cultural heritage in the collections of European museums, archives and other cultural heritage institutions will have no copyright restrictions.
For more information see the full report by CEPIC
here. It is expected to take at least 24 months before the Member States will transpose the new rules into their national legislation.