The EU co-legislators are continuing their efforts to reach an interim agreement on copyright reform by Wednesday 13 February at noon. Logically, future provisions should be based on the latest Council text, with some adaptations on the proportionality of the limitation of liability and the content generated by non-commercial users.
“We have a responsibility to find a compromise that works for everyone. I see no reason why an agreement is impossible. It is possible to protect creators and ensure the vitality of the Internet economy”, said Commissioner Ansip, a few hours before starting the series of concluding trilogues in Strasbourg.
Article 13 continues to focus all attention
At the time of this article’s writing, two of the three meetings planned had already taken place. The first one mainly enabled the Romanian Presidency of the Council to present the main points of its negotiating mandate. The second allowed the European Commission to present, at the request of the co-legislators, a new wording of Articles 13.4a and 13.5 on limitation of liability and user-generated content respectively.
With regard to Article 13.4a, the objective is to ensure that the proportionality criteria of the liability mitigation mechanism and the special regime for young platforms do not collide. We presume that Axel Voss (EPP, Germany), the rapporteur, would have proposed to remove the notion of size from the proportionality criteria in Article 13(4a).
With regard to Article 13.5, namely derogations granted to content generated by amateur users, the co-legislators seem to support the idea of moving forward on the basis of a closed list of derogations. The question at this stage is what exceptions will be included in this list and how they will relate to the InfoSoc 2001/29/EC Directive, which already provides for voluntary exceptions. It will also be necessary to specify that these exceptions apply only in the cases defined by the new Directive and not to acts of reproduction and dissemination of protected works in general.
It should also be noted that some adjustments still need to be made to Articles 13.8 and 13.9, relating to the mechanisms for dialogue between platforms and rights holders and the appeal mechanism.
Other outstanding issues
As regards the creation of a neighbouring right for newspaper publishers, the other sensitive issue in this case, the co-legislators would now consider the idea of a revision clause on the derogation for short extracts (‘snippets').
As for the right of revocation in the event of non-exploitation of a work (Article 16a), it would now be a question of excluding the audiovisual sector for collective works. But this question is still open.
Finally, it should be noted that Axel Voss would have put back on the table Parliament's request to include the sporting world in the scope of the Directive (Article 12a).
For the rest, the inclusion of a mandatory derogation for text and data mining (Article 3a) would not have been discussed at this stage.
According to several observers, the discussions are in the “landing phase”. The deadline for an agreement is Wednesday, 13 February, at noon. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)