Leaked document reveals problems on copyright liability under the proposal for the new European Copyright Directive

The EU has been working on a new copyright directive for the last few years. The proposals for article 13 were criticised by experts for potentially forcing platform intermediaries to implement content matching technology based on a database of copyrighted works to monitor users’ content. Members of the European Parliament, after extensive public pressure, re-debated many controversial aspects of the article. However, a recent Council of Europe (CoE) document revealed that the proposal does not explicit if the existing liability protection is valid under article 13, and that there are no clear exceptions for intermediaries that make an effort to prevent copyright infringements, but inadvertently admit copyrighted content on their platforms.