European Commission Gives Final Seal of Approval To Copyright Law Overhaul (variety.com)

The European Commission, the European Union's executive body, has approved a long-gestating major reform to copyright law, which had already been passed by the European Parliament last month. From a report: The overhaul contains two controversial provisions that will make online platforms liable for illegal uploading of copyright-protected content on their sites, as well as force Google, Facebook and other digital companies to pay publishers for press articles they post online. "With today's agreement, we are making copyright rules fit for the digital age. Europe will now have clear rules that guarantee fair remuneration for creators, strong rights for users and responsibility for platforms," said European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. According to the French newspaper Le Monde, six countries -- Italy, Finland, Sweden, Luxembourg, Poland and the Netherlands -- voted again the reform.

Comments

Block them all

[GrumpySteen]

If the entire EU is blocked from accessing all content on Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and every other social media and news site, they'll get the hint and re-think these ridiculous polices.

Re:Block them all

[Blue Stone]

>As a content provider my self (photographer), it's disheartening to see my work pop up on social media in numbers without end and I only get compensation from the tiny Internet real estate that I initially did business with.

Mate, none of those people sharing your images on social media would have paid you to do that anyway. You realise that, right? Nothing, as such, not even the *opportunity* to make money from those images, has been lost in that respect.

One problem with IP law and the mentality that can surround it is that it gives some people the false impression that creative cultural expression is exactly the same as tangible material property. And it isn't.

I'm not saying that commercial operations should be free to use any image as they see fit without financial and legal obligations to the coyright holder, but I am saying that to expect people who use non-licensed copyrighted material casually on social media the same as if they should have paid for a license, is ridiculous.

European law, with this new copyright law, as well as others such as the so-called 'right to be forgotten' law, has shown itself to still hold to a pre-digital, pre-internet mentality. Copyright is not fit for the modern age, and laws such as the one just passed are, if anything, a step backward.

Stuckists stamping around in their sabots. Except this time, it's not the working classes calling a halt to the new age, it's the establishment and factory owners (which is why it's succeeding and will probably get a lot worse).

Some help to understand all this better

[CustomSolvers2]

I have zero interest in defending EU legislation and much less one about copyright (e.g., all my public activity can be considered public domain). But I think that there is a lot of misinformation online, perhaps even provoked by some interested parties. I found this Q&A from the European Parliament very informative.

Presumably

[UdoKeir]

Presumably this goes both ways. So those "news" outlets whose only content is made up of republishing Twitter (or Reddit) comments and pretending they did some work are now liable for paying those Twitter users for their content.