Comments for MEP Julia Reda proposes major overhaul of EU copyright

Ingrid Vaucelle
Julia Reda presented her draft report in January 2015, willing to harmonize the implementation of Directive 2001/29 which was about copyright in the digital world. Thereafter, other committees gave their opinions on it and submitted 556 amendments in March (which is quite a lot for a report of 5 pages only) and the rapporteur attempted to consolidate the amendments and…
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Julia Reda presented her draft report in January 2015, willing to harmonize the implementation of Directive 2001/29 which was about copyright in the digital world.
Thereafter, other committees gave their opinions on it and submitted 556 amendments in March (which is quite a lot for a report of 5 pages only) and the rapporteur attempted to consolidate the amendments and opinions into a report, which was approved on the 16th of June by 23 of 25 MPs.
On the 9th of July, the Plenary Assembly of the European parliament adopted the report with a majority of 445 votes to 65, with 32 abstentions.

This report was given very much attention despite the fact that it is not a binding text: the commission conducted a consultation on copyright, to which over 11 000 responses were sent (http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/consultations/2013/copyrightrules/docs/contributions/consultation-report_en.pdf) Moreover, the report raised much opposition, especially by France (http://www.nextinpact.com/news/93405-droit-dauteur-tirs-francais-nourris-contre-rapport-reda.htm) and also about freedom of panorama (https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-save-the-freedom-of-photography-savefop-europarl-en)
We can also highlight that some of the debate was raised because of the political color of Reda herself: she is the only EP member of the International Pirate Party and was seen as “the fox in charge of the hen house” (https://euobserver.com/news/129146)

The final report that was adopted in July can be found here (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P8-TA-2015-0273&language=EN)

The main conclusions and proposal of the report are quite different from the original draft of the rapporteur, in the meaning that many compromises had to be made, and Reda says as a conclusion that: “it is not a really visionary report in the end, in the sense that the language is much more careful than the original draft”. See here the comparison of the original and the final report (https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/compromise_amendments.pdf)

To sum up, the report encourages fair remuneration for right holders, and reaffirms national borders on the internet (which was absolutely not the intention expressed by Reda who initially wanted to implement a European copyright).
The report underlines that technological progresses require improvements of the legal framework in terms of access to the legal content, especially on geographical grounds.
It also encourages the Commission to study the impact of a modernization of copyright on film and TV contents (about the importance of territorial licenses in the EU).
The report finally stresses the need to reduce geoblocking measures (particularly for cultural minorities, in order to facilitate their access to online contents in their language) and to enhance portability rules as well as to protect the public domain.

The plenary deleted the controversial amendment about freedom of panorama, after the petition of EU citizens (see below), leaving the status quo.

See the comments of Julia Reda on the final report here: https://juliareda.eu/copyright-evaluation-report/full/#borders

As a conclusion, we can say that it is now in the hand of the Commission to come up with a more ambitious proposal in order to push even further them modernization of European copyright rules.

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