Last week Monday, on the first anniversary of the entry into force of the Copyright in the DSM Directive, we held the first virtual edition of our COMMUNIA Salon. During the event we presented an overview of the implementation status in the EU member states, zoomed in (sic!) on various legislative proposals to implement Articles 15 and 17 of the Directive and discussed ways to challenge parts of the Directive via the legal system. If you have missed the event you can watch a recording of the presentations and the subsequent discussion here:
The event was kicked off by Teresa Nobre who launched the COMMUNIA implementation tracker and presented an overview of the implementation in the EU member states. While France has already implemented the press publishers right, the majority of EU member states are still in various stages of consultation. One year after the entry into force of the Directive, only Belgium, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands have put forward legislative proposals.
In the following presentation Ula Furgał (CREATe) focussed on the implementation of Article 15, highlighting a number of relatively small differences in their approaches. She also highlighted the fact that the French implementation has so far failed to produce the desired results, which has led to the intervention of the French competition authority requiring Google to engage in good faith negotiations with press publishers.
Paul Keller presented an overview of the Article 17 implementation status and the discussions in the Commission’s stakeholder dialogue. All implementations that have been proposed so far stick relatively close to the language of the Directive. The implementation proposals in the Netherlands & France are lacking key user rights safeguards. With the stakeholder dialogue currently stalled (the Commission’ guidelines are not expected to become available before the end of the year), key questions surrounding the implementation of the article remain unanswered at this point.
In the final presentation, former MEP Felix Reda presented Control ©, his new strategic litigation project focussing on free communication in the field of copyright. HE situated the provisions of the Directive in the contentious field between copyright and fundamental rights, pointing out that key aspects of the new EU copyright regime will be shaped by litigation in the courts. Because of this a public interest focussed strategic litigation agenda must go hand in hand with efforts aimed at influencing the national implementation of the Directive.
To be continued…
We would like to thank everyone who participated in our event and we are looking forward to organising another edition of the COMMUNIA salon in the near future.
