Protection of Platform Authors in the Context of the EU DSM Directive: The Invisible 'Gig Authorship'?

Abstract

Digital Platforms have by now become an inseparable part of the digital infrastructure and the Internet as we know it. Through their aggregation of digital and other resources, information, and people, they have created a new landscape of services we now see as natural part of our lives but have also introduced a set of legal challenges creating new power imbalances or exacerbating old ones. This article seeks to address one of the sides of this new power dynamics, namely, the interactions between platforms and their content creators with a lens of the new harmonised rules for authors’ contractual relationships in the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive (the DSM Directive).

This research invites for conversation about what EU Copyright law could bring to these “Gig Authors” focusing on three large and famous creative sharing platforms - YouTube, Roblox and Instagram and the conditions of creators there. This picture is contrasted with the harmonized EU copyright protection measures for authors’ contractual relationships (arts. 18-22 DSM Directive) which are specifically aimed at strengthening the bargaining position of authors when they enter into contracts to exploit their creative works. It will be shown that while the relationship and the terms and conditions might vary, in most cases the platforms act as intermediaries with a lot of unilateral control over what works are published, how much creators earn, and what the conditions of the relationship are. While the articles 18-23 of the DSM directive might be a useful tool to remedy some of the power imbalances, the current provisions need to be reinterpreted and adapted to really be usable for the gig authors.

Keywords: Copyright, platforms, authorship, DSM Directive, Roblox, Youtube, Instagram, Gig Authorship