|
On September 12, 2018, the European Parliament's legal
affairs committee voted to approve new
copyright laws.
The critical
elements of the law are Article 11 and 13.
Article 11 give publishers and papers the right to charge
anyone for linking to their work.
It enables Information Society Service Providers to
grant copyright status to works by publishers, but limits
such rights to one year.
It also exempts published works used for copying an
“insubstantial” part or for use in academic or scientific
research.
Under Article 13 Search Engines and sites that aggregate
information will not be exempt from copyright infringements.
These businesses will only be granted exemption if
they show that they are trying to prevent copyrighted works
from being shared and act quickly to remove them from their
sites.
This new law if implemented will have an adverse effect on
the sharing of information on the web.
This will impact businesses big or small, whether it
be YouTube, Facebook, Google or your small business website
that aggregate and share information.
You will no longer be able to link to other sites
without getting the permission of the copyright owner and
paying their copyright fee.
It will require huge legal fees and costly
implementation of measures to fulfill the requirements.
The law is facing opposition from large and small
businesses, academia, and many European nations.
What’s next?
The directive itself still faces a final vote in January
2019. Once passed the final vote it will need to be
implemented by individual EU member states, who will apply
their own individual interpretation and implementation.
|
