Amendments to the EU copyright directive are approved by the European Parliament

The European Parliament approved amendments to the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market 2016/0280(COD), also known as the EU Copyright Directive, which intends to harmonise aspects of the copyright law across the EU. The vote included two controversial points, enshrined in Articles 11 and 13, dubbed the ‘link tax’ (or ‘snippet tax’) and the ‘upload filter’ by critics. Article 11 is intended to give publishers and newspapers a way to make money when companies like Google link to their stories. It extends the 2001 Copyright Directive to grant publishers direct copyright over “online use of their press publications by information society service providers”. Search engines and online platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, will have to pay a license to link to news publishers when quoting portions of text from these outlets. The bill says that the new rights given to publishers “shall not prevent legitimate private and non-commercial use of press publications by individual users”. However, it does not make clear what counts as ‘portions of the text’ or as a commercial platform which could allegedly encompass blogs, RSS feeds, or a Facebook page operated by an individual who has a considerably large audience for example. Article 13 says that online platforms are liable for content uploaded by users that infringes copyright. It requires that platforms proactively work with rightsholders to stop users uploading copyrighted content. This could potentially mean scanning all data being uploaded to sites like YouTube and Facebook. This measure could affect memes – images or videos that spread ‘virally’ online, often accompanied by a witty snippet of text – and music remixes shared online. The proposal will now enter negotiations between the Council of the EU, The European Commission and the Parliament. If these three bodies agree, it will be sent to each EU member state for implementation in 2019.