A Brief Exegesis of the Proposed Copyright Directive
16 Pages Posted: 30 Nov 2016 Last revised: 15 Jan 2017
Date Written: November 24, 2016
Abstract
The recently proposed new Copyright Directive was released on 14 September 2016. It has been described by EU law-makers as the pillar of the copyright package promised by the European Commission (EC), to be delivered before the end of Mr. Juncker’s mandate. In its Communication of 6 May 2015, the EC had stressed “the importance to enhance cross-border access to copyright-protected content services, facilitate new uses in the fields of research and education, and clarify the role of online services in the distribution of works and other subject-matter.” The proposed Copyright Directive is thus a key measure aiming to address two of these three issues. We concentrate on the third one, carefully examining the text of both the explanatory memorandum and the Directive itself, in an attempt to highlight its shortfalls. We hope that this exercise will prove useful for the debate that has now begun both in the European Parliament and in the Council. We begin with a brief assessment of the explanatory memorandum and then focus on the articles and recitals of the proposed Copyright Directive.
Our conclusions are:
1. A comprehensive re-assessment of Article 13 and Recital 39 in the light of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the E-commerce Directive (in particular Article 15) including Court of Justice of the European Union case law is needed, as the proposed Copyright Directive does not expressly address the issue of its compatibility with both of these texts.
2. Recital 38 does not clarify the domain and effect of Article 13. Rather, it creates confusion as it goes against settled CJEU case law (relating to Articles 14 and 15 of the E-commerce Directive and Article 3 of the Infosoc Directive). Recital 38 should therefore be deleted or substantially re-drafted/re-phrased. If the EU wants to introduce a change in this regard it should clearly justify its choice. In any case, a recital in the preamble to a directive is not an appropriate tool to achieve this effect.
Keywords: Intermediaries, Monitoring, Proposed Copyright Directive, European Union
JEL Classification: K00
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation