EU Parliament and EU Council reaches agreement on Copyright reform

EU Parliament and EU Council reaches agreement on Copyright reform. The EU institutions decided not to impose filtering obligations but right-holders will get their fair share of any revenue due to copyright. According to the agreement, right-holders (especially musicians, performers, script authors, and news publishers) will have a much better position in negotiation remuneration for sharing their work via Internet platforms.  They will have the right to get information on how their work is exploited by publishers and producers, so they can negotiate their contracts with relevant information. Also for the first time, the criteria for ‘appropriate and proportionate remuneration’ for authors and performers will be defined which will allow them to ask for additional remuneration if the one agreed in the first place is disproportionately low. As for users, the situation will be easier since they are allowed to upload copyrighted work for quotation, criticism, review, caricature, parody or pastiche purposes. However, Internet platforms such as YouTube will need to ensure that they have agreements in place with right holders for copyrighted work available on their platforms. If not, they can be subjected to liability if they cannot demonstrate that they have given their best efforts to ensure such deal or to ensure that copyrighted work is not made available without permission, or expediently remove it upon notification (some small companies will be exempted from this requirement). Finally, the new rules will loosen up when it comes to data mining, research, educational, and cultural heritage purposes. The text needs to be confirmed officially by the EU Parliament and EU Council, and published to be officially adopted.