Reform of the Copyright Law in Europe


On September 16, 2016 the European Commission published its project of modernization of the EU's copyright law, intending to strengthen the position of copyright holders. One of the most remarkable features of this proposal is the requirement for website to control pirated content. The Commission explains, that “…proposal obliges such service providers to take appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure the protection of user-uploaded works, for example by putting in place content recognition technologies.” This means that online services, which deal with large volumes of user-uploaded content, must use fingerprinting and filtering mechanisms to block copyright infringing files, as reported by the portal torrenfreak.com. These mechanisms can be similar to Content ID system, which is used by YouTube to detect illegal copies of copyrighted works. Another proposal includes the measures of assigning to media a right holder status, which means they will receive exclusive rights to their texts. As a result, news aggregators, like Google, Facebook and others will have to get a license to use extracts from their articles.