Last week, the countries from the EU block approved of revamping its “copyright rules”, whereby Facebook Inc. and Google will be required to pay for “news snippets” to publishers while contents on either Instagram or Youtube that are under copy-right protection will have to be filtered out.
The revamp received a nod from majority of the diplomats on the bloc while “Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland”, along with the other countries were against the same. The deal was sealed in the presence of the European Parliament, the EU countries’ negotiators as well as the European Commission. This came after two years since the bloc executive came up with change proposals for protecting the cultural heritage of the bloc. It has been an attempt to make sure that the artists, publishers as well as the broadcasters receive fair remuneration.
Currently, Romania is holding the European Union’s presidency that works in a rotation basis, whereby the country took to Twitter platform to revealed that the European Council had given its approval for the copyright agreement. However, the countries those opposed the changes proposed argued that this step could be a hindrance towards innovation which could cost heavily in the digital market competition.
According to a joint statement the countries said:
“We regret that the Directive does not strike the right balance between the protection of right holders and the interests of EU citizens and companies”.
This week, there is likely to be a committee voting by the lawmakers as the next process which will be followed up by “a parliamentary vote” that could take place either in the coming month or in the beginning of April for the changes to be implemented in the law. Under these upcoming changes, online platforms like Google will have to get into “licensing agreements” with the “rights holders such as musicians, performers, authors, news publishers and journalists” for being able to use their “work online”.
Moreover, Google owned YouTube while Facebook owned Instagram along with other such platforms will need to “install upload filters” which will prevent the users from “uploading copyrighted materials”. While Reuters reported that:
“Google, which has lobbied against both features and has even suggested that it might pull Google News from Europe, said last week it would study the text before deciding on its next steps”.
References:
reuters.com
The revamp received a nod from majority of the diplomats on the bloc while “Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland”, along with the other countries were against the same. The deal was sealed in the presence of the European Parliament, the EU countries’ negotiators as well as the European Commission. This came after two years since the bloc executive came up with change proposals for protecting the cultural heritage of the bloc. It has been an attempt to make sure that the artists, publishers as well as the broadcasters receive fair remuneration.
Currently, Romania is holding the European Union’s presidency that works in a rotation basis, whereby the country took to Twitter platform to revealed that the European Council had given its approval for the copyright agreement. However, the countries those opposed the changes proposed argued that this step could be a hindrance towards innovation which could cost heavily in the digital market competition.
According to a joint statement the countries said:
“We regret that the Directive does not strike the right balance between the protection of right holders and the interests of EU citizens and companies”.
This week, there is likely to be a committee voting by the lawmakers as the next process which will be followed up by “a parliamentary vote” that could take place either in the coming month or in the beginning of April for the changes to be implemented in the law. Under these upcoming changes, online platforms like Google will have to get into “licensing agreements” with the “rights holders such as musicians, performers, authors, news publishers and journalists” for being able to use their “work online”.
Moreover, Google owned YouTube while Facebook owned Instagram along with other such platforms will need to “install upload filters” which will prevent the users from “uploading copyrighted materials”. While Reuters reported that:
“Google, which has lobbied against both features and has even suggested that it might pull Google News from Europe, said last week it would study the text before deciding on its next steps”.
References:
reuters.com