On 20 June 2018 The European Parliament voted to amend the Copyright Directive in the Digital Single Market (the procedure Directive 2016/0280(COD), which can certainly be described as revolutionary. Today, the European Parliament will decide on a further legislative procedure i.e.
whether the committee responsible (JURI committee) is to propose a copyright directive or whether it should be put to the vote in plenary. Regardless of the evaluation of the provisions of the Directive, it is certain that tomorrow the European Parliament will vote on the future of the Internet not only in the European Union.
It should be recalled that the mere adoption of the Directive in the European Parliament does not mean that its provisions will apply directly in the Member States. Once the Directive has been adopted, Member States will still have to implement the Directive into their national legal order. Nevertheless, 20 June European Parliament adopted two solutions that will be difficult to give up.
first the change is the introduction of a content filtering obligation. Proposed Article 13 will make websites or other websites responsible for what internet users publish. This means that before any comment is made on an article published online, it will be necessary to check that it does not violate copyright. This may result in significant delays in publishing comments or even blocking them.
second change can also fundamentally change the face of the Internet. Article 11 provides for the introduction of the so-called "link tax". This is not a common term, however, because the tax is a tribute to the State.
This provision grants the owner of a given portal the right to demand a fee for publishing even the smallest part of his work online. This would mean that even the title of an article, book or CD could not appear anywhere without the permission of the author of this type of work.
As a result, news aggregators such as Google News will not be able to list the most important messages. Even reviewers will have to cover the covers of the books or CDs discussed.
Experts estimate that the proposed changes will create many inconveniences for Internet users and portal owners. The first must be that e.g. publishing content online (which means also sharing memes or links itself) can be considered a violation of copyright. Moreover, searching for content on the Internet can be more difficult than ever.
In addition, comments will have to go through mandatory controls before publication. This means that controversial or potentially dangerous content will be blocked. However, it will be a major problem for the owners of websites to create a mechanism for the detection of pirated and potentially controversial content.
Moreover, they will be responsible for all content published by Internet users. Portals will have to create content filtering mechanisms, employing employees or entrusting this task to artificial intelligence. Each of these solutions will mean an increase in costs.
They will undoubtedly be significant because on websites such as Facebook one million entries each day. It is worth noting that their authors are also people from outside the European Union.
Critics of the new Copyright Directive are beating the alarm and claiming that its provisions are far too far from reality. They argue that if the draft directive is adopted as approved by the JURI committee, the openness of the Internet will be seriously compromised. Moreover, their assessment of the provisions that may soon be implemented is worryingly similar to those contained in ACTA.
Supporters of the project say that the directive is several years late. In addition, they argue that large online companies should pay authors for the intellectual values they use in their business.
On the other hand, passwords such as "link tax" or "ACTA2", do not have their source in the directive and are invented only to activate European Union citizens to fight the new directive.
The fact is, however, that these slogans are so catchy that they electrified all European Internet users, as evidenced, among others, by the fact that in the act of protest against the new directive Polish Wikipedia was excluded the day before the vote on the further mode of proceeding over the directive.
In turn, authors' associations believe that the new law strikes a business model used by news aggregators. This model is based on the profits achieved through the work of others, with no cost being incurred, a. The authors indicate that intellectual goods are the same as all other goods and should be paid for them.
In their view, the whole dispute boils down to the question whether a person who benefits from the valuable work of others should pay for it. On the other hand, authors emphasize that they do not want money from an average Internet user, but from large corporations such as Google.
Authors, artists and journalists agree that without the content they create, the Internet does not exist. At the same time, they argue that the Directive will not affect ordinary network users, i.e. Those who do not earn on content published by others.
However, even in view of the legitimate rationale of the authors of content posted on the Internet, the proposed changes should be assessed as consensual to the idea of the Internet itself. It is now based on free and mutual links. This. one from the foundations of the net.
From the beginning, Google's algorithm was to check how many links lead to a given website. If external links are prohibited, the entire connection and content sharing mechanism can work properly. There is no doubt that changes are needed, especially in the fight against piracy on the Internet.
However, they cannot apply to all websites, but only those whose main purpose is to publish content susceptible to piracy, for example films.
Finally, it is worth noting that the Internet is developing at an extremely fast pace, and the proposed changes can only achieve the intended effect in the case of traditional media. An argument for the potential ineffectiveness of the proposed solutions may be the problems already occurring with filtering comments on the network.
Experts here point to repeated attempts to combat curses in comments. Every time it turned out that the creativity of users exceeded the capabilities of algorithms. Spaces, special characters or HTML characters caused prohibited words to be illegible to the automatic system, but fully understandable to other users.
In the end, it turned out to be impossible to build an algorithm to moderate content.
I'm sure. one it is clear: today the European Parliament will decide the future of the Internet. In order to achieve the values of the democratic system, it is necessary that such an important directive be adopted for the vote in the plenary session of the European Parliament. It seems that deciding on the extent of such an important freedom of expression should be put in the hands of democratically elected representatives of citizens of the European Union.
Author
Justyna Kyć - Legal adviser in the Legal Department of 2017 associated with Russell Bedford Poland. He specializes in corporate customer service, in particular in drawing up and negotiating commercial contracts and providing ongoing legal advice.