EU negotiators have found a political agreement on the Copyright Directive.
In a nutshell:
Publishers/Agencies Right: European press publishers will enjoy a new right, which aims to facilitate the way they negotiate how their content is re-used on online platforms. It will give journalists the right to receive a greater share of the revenues generated by the online uses of press publications. This right will not affect citizens and individual users, who will continue to enjoy and share news hyperlinks as they do today.
Value Gap: Platforms whose main or one of the main purposes is to store and give the public access to a large amount of copyright protected works will be forced to seek licensing agreements with rightholders. Licences will be concluded if the rightholders wish so. In this sense, the liability of the users is being transferred to the platform.
What comes next?
1) The member States has to formally agree upon the final text. If they do not, the Directive falls;
2) Assuming Member States agree, which we expect to be the case, the JURI committee in the European Parliament (Legal Affairs) will vote on the text. Regardless of whether or not JURI agrees with the text, it will go to a plenary session of the European Parliament where MEPs must adopt or reject the text.
We expect both meetings the week beginning 18 February, in all likelihood on Wednesday and Thursday (but could take place from the week beginning 25 February ) and a vote in plenary at the end of March or the beginning April.
Once adopted and published on the Official Journal of the EU, the Member States will have 24 months to transpose the new rules into their national legislation.
