EU Takes Step Toward Copyright Law That Could Hurt Silicon Valley
13 September 2018 - 12:35AM
Dow Jones News
By Sam Schechner and Valentina Pop
STRASBOURG, France -- The European Parliament on Wednesday
adopted a draft copyright bill with provisions aimed at forcing
tech giants to pay more to media companies for music and news
content that is used on their platforms.
The vote, which was delayed for several months amid intense
lobbying from publishers and internet companies, sets the
parameters for negotiations among the parliament, the EU's
executive body and European governments. If a law is ultimately
agreed, EU countries would have up to two years to implement the
new rules, which would be enforced by member countries.
The tech industry has strongly opposed the new rules, and on
Wednesday several groups said they would keep fighting the bill's
final adoption during coming negotiations with member states.
Edima, a trade group representing online platforms including
Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Apple Inc. and Facebook
Inc., said EU legislators had "decided to support the filtering of
the internet to the benefit of big businesses in the music and
publishing industries despite huge public outcry."
"Today marks a very sad day for the internet in Europe," said
Mozilla, which makes the Firefox web browser, adding: "The fight is
not over yet."
On the side of publishers, independent music companies
association Impala said that "this is a great day for Europe's
creators."
A spokesman for the European Publishers Council said the
decision marked "a great day for the independent press and for
democracy," adding that the outcome would foster the development of
publishing startups and enable journalists to share in revenue
generated by publishers.
Debate over the bill has focused for the most part on two
measures.
One measure would give news publishers the right to negotiate
payment for "digital use" of their content by tech firms. Another
would require online-video sites like Google's YouTube to pay
"proportionate remuneration" for their works, and take measures to
prevent uploads of content for which it doesn't have a license.
Publishers say the rules are needed because a growing share of
consumers arrive through social media and aggregators, undercutting
publishers' efforts to attract subscribers.
But it isn't clear what impact the measures will have. When
Spain passed a similar law, Google shut down its local Google News
service. When Germany passed a copyright law, publishers gave
Google licenses for free rather than lose traffic.
Record labels have long lobbied to require platforms like
YouTube to scan their uploads for copyright material, something
YouTube currently does on a voluntary basis. Record labels say the
rules will make it easier for them to negotiate with such
platforms.
But tech executives say making platforms responsible for
ensuring that no unlicensed copyright material is uploaded to their
services would create a costly obligation that would discourage
smaller companies from offering services.
Supporters of the bill say they made changes to the parliament
text to respond to critics from the tech industry by exempting
"small and micro" platforms from the directive's obligations. In
addition, the law will exempt noncommercial encyclopedias like
Wikipedia from the rules.
Nevertheless, the Wikimedia Foundation, parent of the online
encyclopedia, has been one of the bill's biggest detractors, saying
it would hurt free expression. "It isn't really about us," said
Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia's founder. "It's about the ecosystem we're a
part of."
--Sara Germano contributed to this article.
Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com and Valentina
Pop at valentina.pop@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 12, 2018 10:20 ET (14:20 GMT)
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