CULT Committee Draft Opinion on the Digital Single Market Directive on Copyright

The draft opinion on copyright in the Digital Single Market from the Culture and Education (CULT) Committee of the European Parliament has been published. The  rapporteur of the draft Opinion is MEP Marc Joulaud (EPP, France).


The presentation of the draft opinion should take place during the CULT Committee meeting of 27-28 February. The Committee vote is currently scheduled for 4 May.

In his short justification for the draft opinion, the Rapporteur notes that he has tabled amendments related to four key objectives:

1. Provide legal certainty regarding the new exceptions and limitations

“The Rapporteur supports the new mandatory exceptions and limitations provided in this Directive (...)However, in the opinion of the Rapporteur, the current proposal does not provide full legal clarity on the burden of the parties involved in each exception, which would jeopardise their effectiveness and hamper their harmonised implementation. Therefore, the rapporteur has specified the obligations of the relevant parties involved in the exceptions, in order to reduce the risk of harm for rightholders (Article 3), give certainty on recourse to licences or the exception (Article 4) and to secure common practices (Article 5).”

2. Define digital content platforms and ensure a fair cooperation with rightholders

“(...) the Rapporteur has proposed a new definition covering the information society services falling within the scope of this Directive, which he has termed ‘digital content platforms’. Instead of focusing on the technical characteristics of the service (ie the notion of storage), the Rapporteur believes that the notion of principal purpose is more appropriate to encapsulate properly the services relevant for the provisions of this Directive.”

“(...) digital content platforms are considered to be information society services the main purpose of which is to provide the public with a significant amount of user-generated content, copyright-protected works or other subject-matter uploaded or displayed by their users for the purpose of information, entertainment or education.”

3. Create a new pillar to protect consumer’s legitimate practices

“From a legal standpoint, it is also the opinion of the Rapporteur that digital practices of users do not benefit from legal certainty under the current copyright rules, in particular the exceptions and limitations, and therefore require a specific approach, a fourth pillar within this Directive.”

“To create this fourth pillar, the Rapporteur first defines the notion of ’user-generated content’, which is at the core of most user practices online.”

 “In order to acknowledge and secure common non-commercial user practices that are not harmful for rightholders, the Rapporteur has enshrined the so-called “panorama exception” through a minimum harmonisation of the existing exception and excluded non-commercial uses from the scope of protection of press publications (Article 11).”

“the Rapporteur has reinforced the complaints and redress mechanism in Article 13 to provide a minimum level of legal certainty for users with regard to the procedures”.

4. Allow authors and performers to effectively enforce their rights

“In order to prevent any chilling effect that might dissuade authors and performers from enforcing their rights, the Rapporteur has provided that disputes between authors, performers and their contractual partners may be initiated either on an individual or collective basis.”

Information provided by C4C.

A new President for the European Parliament

Since Tuesday 17 January 2017, Antonio Tajani, an Italian MEP of the European People Party is the new President of the European Parliament replacing Martin Schulz (Germany, S&D).

He was elected with 351 votes in the fourth and final round against 282 votes for his rival Gianni Pittella, Italian  MEP, Socialist and Democrat.


The details about the ballots are accessible on the Parliament webpage here.

The new webpage of the President is accessible here.

This election also comes with a change in the so-called bureau of the European Parliament composed of 14 Vice-Presidents and 5 Quaestors.

We are happy to note that 2 MEPs of the MEP Library Lovers Group are members of the bureau: Mairead McGuinness (EPP, Ireland) and Sylvie Guillaume (S&D, France).

A Hearing on the Marrakesh Treaty Implementation at the EU Parliament on 30 January 2017

Monday 30 January, a hearing on the implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty in the EU was held in the European Parliament.

Read the report on this hearing by David Hammerstein from the World Blind Union below:

The European Commission, the EBU and librarians take a firm stance in favour of strong EU Marrakesh Treaty legislation

At a hearing yesterday in the European Parliament´s Legal Affairs Committee the European Commission, European Union President and libraries spokesperson all took strong positions against the weakening of the Marrakesh Treaty legislation by introducing compensation, commercial availability or authorized entity registration clauses into the Regulation and Directive now being considered. Marco Giorello of the European Commission summed up this sentiment with a very clear statement: “Concerning market availability and compensation proposals and given the specificity of this issue, there is no need to add them to this legislation that clearly responds to a clear problem of “market failure” and to introduce to the internal market additional requirements would not be justified in light of the additional burdens it would mean.”

Maria Martín Prat, Copyright Head at the European Commission, opened the meeting by admitting that the EU was initially against the idea of a treaty but that the EU´s position evolved over time as did its commitment to reach a positive result at the 2013 diplomatic conference in Marrakesh when she said “we couldn´t leave Marrakesh without a Treaty”. She insisted on keeping the EU legislation user- friendly and without unnecessary barriers.

The President of the European Blind Union, Wolfgang Angermann was very clear: “we demand total respect for article 11 of the legislation that excludes the possibility of commercial availability and compensation schemes”. Referring to the publishers who are asking for commercial availability rules, he said that “some people would like our accessible bookshelves to be empty and to only allow us to have books that can be purchased and that would be discriminatory against blind persons”. “On compensation for publishers there is no need for incentives because the Treaty exists in the first place because of a market failure by the same publishers.” He said it made no sense for blind persons organisations to have the double burden of producing the formatted books and also paying publishers for them. Mr. Angermann voiced strong support for the key elements of the European Commission proposal to assure full compliance with the Marrakesh Treaty.

Stephen Wyber in representation of International Librarians explained the essential role of librarians in distributing accessible books around the world. He said that if the EU did not get their legislation right, by adding more administrative and financial burdens, the Treaty would not be able to serve millions of blind and visually impaired persons globally.

The Directive and the Regulation will be put to a vote on February 28 in the European Parliament´s Legal Affairs Committee when over 100 amendments from the different political groups will be considered. After the vote, the European Parliament, led by rapporteur MEP Max Andersson, will begin negotiations with the Council (EU member states) in order to reach a final agreement on the legislation. Once the Directive and Regulation are adopted by the European Parliament plenary, the Council will be expected to ratify the Treaty if there are no other unexpected problems.

You may also be interested in this article by IPwatch:

• EU Adoption Of Marrakesh Treaty For Blind Readers Imminent After Years Of Delay?

Read also our article under the section Europe and Worldwide.

A seminar from FEP/IFRRO/EWC on Copyright at the European Parliament on 02 February 2017

IFLA-EBLIDA joint statement calling Europe to take action to end the book famine

Over the past few months, EBLIDA together with IFLA and EIFL issued a number of statements and position papers concerning the ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty in the European Union.
 

In the current context of digital single market proposals in the framework of copyright reform, the European Commission, proposed a directive and a regulation on Marrakesh.

Those legal instruments are now being discussed by the European Parliament and the Council.

Our organisations have established good contact with MEPs in charge of this file.
 
However, we have recently become aware of proposals by the German government to introduce amendments that would oblige beneficiaries and authorised entities (such as libraries) to pay compensation to rightholders for creating and sharing accessible format copies of works, with part of this money going to publishers. This was the subject of David Hammerstein’s  (World Blind Union) article published in our January newsletter. It is to be noted that while Council meetings are closed to the public, we are also aware that other countries have been lobbying for similar provisions.
 
Given the need to make it clear that these calls are contrary to the spirit of Marrakesh, EBLIDA together with IFLA and EIFL issued on Friday 13 January a joint statement and an infographic calling Europe to take action to end the book famine.
 
A few days later, a hearing was organised in the European Parliament (see our section Inside Brussels above).

EBLIDA briefing on the e-lending judgement of the CJEU

E-lending is an issue that will stay high on the European agenda and in every discussion with European policy makers.
 
Considering that the judgement of the CJEU in case C-174/15 brought some new elements for discussion, EBLIDA tasked its expert group on information law to compile a 6 page briefing of the case.


The briefing is divided into three sections:

1. The main content of the ruling;
2. Frequently Asked Questions;
3. Next steps.

Since 19 January 2017, the briefing is accessible on the EBLIDA website.

Reminder: Next EBLIDA NAPLE Annual Council and Conference, 3-4 May 2017

Programme overview :

NAPLE General Assembly (For NAPLE members only)
13.00 – 17.30 (incl. coffee)
Venue Dokk1 – Lille Sal
Programme – See http://naple.mcu.es/

Expert Meetings
(By invitation only)
10.00 – 13.00 (incl. coffee)
Venue Dokk1 – Meeting room 1 & Meeting room 2

• A round table that will address the issue of Rethinking in a competing environment;
• A world café to Rethinking Library Advocacy.
• A session in the form of a retroactive look throughout the years to Rethink our achievements and the way forward.

Reminder - Upcoming EBLIDA Executive Committee Meeting – Valletta (Malta) – February 2017

EBLIDA will host its 1^st Executive Committee of the year in Valetta, Malta.
The event is being organised with the support of MaLIA, the Maltese Library Association and the National Library of Malta.


We will take the opportunity of this meeting to strengthen our connections with our Maltese colleagues. Furthermore, we are preparing a special library event for Maltese MEPs who will be invited to a library tour and a meeting with European Librarians to discover more about our work, our strengths and the issues we are facing both in Malta and throughout  Europe.