Upload Filters Will Always Be A Bad Idea, But Germany's New Implementation Of Article 17 Is An Attempt To Provide Some Protection For Users, Which Others May Follow

from the but-what-will-the-CJEU-say? dept

The EU's Copyright Directive was passed back in 2019, and the two-year period for implementing the law in national legislation is almost up. The text's contradictory requirements to stop infringing material from being posted online without imposing a general requirement to monitor users, which is not permitted under EU law, has proved difficult for governments to deal with. France aims to solve this by ignoring even the limited user protections laid down by the Directive. Germany has been having a rather fraught debate about how exactly Article 17, which implicitly requires upload filters, should be implemented. One good idea to allow users to "pre-flag" as legal the material they upload was jettisoned. That led to fears that the country's implementation of Article 17 would be as bad as France's. But the final version of the law does attempt to ensure that automated filters -- now admitted as indispensable, despite earlier assurances they were optional -- do not block user uploads that are not infringing on copyright. Communia explains:

the German implementation relies on the concept of "uses presumably authorised by law", which must not be blocked automatically. For an upload to qualify as "presumably authorised by law", it needs to fulfil the following cumulative criteria:

The use must consist of less than 50% of the original protected work,
The use must combine the parts of the work with other content, and
The use must be minor (a non-commercial use of less than 15 seconds of audio or video, 160 characters of text or 125 kB of graphics) or, if it generates significant revenues or exceeds these thresholds, the user must flag it as being covered by an exception.

Although it's good that this "presumably authorised by law" use is enshrined in law, the actual limits are absurd. For example, the name alone of the EU Copyright Directive in German is longer than 160 characters. Copyright holders can still challenge the legality of material, but platforms have to keep the uploads online until the complaints have been reviewed by a human. As former Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda writes on the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (Society for Civil Liberties) site, there's another feature of the new German law that might help keep upload filters in check, at least a little (original in German, translation via DeepL):

In order to enforce freedom of expression and artistic freedom against upload filters gone wild, the draft law provides for a right of association action for non-commercial associations dedicated to protecting the interests of users. These associations can take legal action against platforms that repeatedly block legal content. In addition, users will be able to claim damages against false copyright claims. The Society for Civil Liberties will use these possibilities if it becomes necessary.

Those are important new options for getting material back online, and discouraging over-blocking. Reda notes that there is also good news for popular online activities such as caricature, parody and pastiche, which will be permitted without restrictions:

This copyright exception includes memes, remixes, mashups, fan fiction and fan art. The German government's draft proposal was to restrict this right to remix in the German copyright reform, although it was adopted as mandatory at the EU level as part of Article 17. The German government's proposal that these uses should only be allowed "provided that the extent of the use is justified by the specific purpose" generated an outcry in the fan fiction community. This has apparently had an effect, because the [German parliament's] legal committee has removed this restriction. Fans in Germany can now look forward to a solid legal basis for fan art and remix culture.

The new German copyright law also brings in copyright exceptions for online teaching, and text and data mining. Cultural institutions such as libraries or archives will be permitted to make their collections available online if these works are no longer commercially available. Those are all welcome, but it is the implementation of Article 17 that is likely to have the most impact. As the Communia blog post notes:

the German implementation law sets a new standard for the implementation of the [Digital Single Market] directive. This is especially true for the implementation of Article 17. With the Commission having missed the chance to issue guidance for the member states in a timely manner [discussed previously on Techdirt], other member states who seek to implement Article 17 in a fundamental rights-compliant way should look at the German law for guidance.

Since the new Germany copyright law could become the model for other EU nations as they implement Article 17 -- except for France, of course -- it's good news that it has a number of positive elements. Those are likely to prove crucial if -- or rather when -- the EU Copyright Directive faces another legal challenge at the CJEU, the Court of Justice of the European Union (Poland has already lodged one). The complaint is likely to be that Article 17 cannot be implemented without violating the fundamental rights of users. In that case, the CJEU will have to decide whether Germany's innovative approach goes far enough in preserving them.

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Filed Under: article 17, censorship, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, fair dealing, fair use, germany, presumably authorized by law, snippets, upload filters


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 May 2021 @ 2:53pm

    Cultural institutions such as libraries or archives will be permitted to make their collections available online if these works are no longer commercially available.

    I am hereby making available one copy of whatever, priced at $5bn.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 May 2021 @ 3:35pm

    So if one paper copy's 170 characters from an article could they be sued for copyright infringement
    Does fair use not exist in europe?
    I see online websites constantly posting images from celebrity
    Social media accounts
    Under this law reddit will have to shutdown in the EU
    apart from forums that host parodys and memes
    or else disable most images photos in the EU

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 May 2021 @ 4:05pm

    Looking at that first (and third) criteria...

    • Right off the bat we run into a major problem in the categories of commentary/review and let's plays. Both of these categories are meant to be seen in addition the the original source material they are referring to. While for the former category you could go without the source material, the lack of context makes an in-depth view half-coherent at best. For the let's play category, the result is incomplete at best (given the genre is basically player reaction to a game in Realtime, this prevents parts of the game from being played and thus reacted to) and impossible at worst
      • Related to the above: How do you judge what is 50% of a videogame? Not all video games follow a linear storyline... Or end after said storyline for that matter. This is especially noticeable if the game uses an online form of multiplayer.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 May 2021 @ 4:45pm

    I want to satirize

    Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft

    ... but I am already out of characters.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 May 2021 @ 4:56pm

    For example, the name alone of the EU Copyright Directive in German is longer than 160 characters.

    Would writing that name (or whatever you're quoting) in an image be a viable workaround? A 125 KB graphic can hold a lot of text. Does the font have to be "graphical" to a certain degree to count? Is an SVG still considered "graphic"?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 27 May 2021 @ 1:46am

    Why am I not surprised?

    Well, at least it looks as if German legislators, facing a meal consisting of fresh feces, at least tried to show willing by breaking out the salt and pepper.

    Not that it really changes anything. The copyright directive, if enforced at all, will sterilize much of the open net and heavily incentivize the darknet. Trying to make this shit-show less burdensome only means Germany will be trying to defend the remnants of it after France's attempts have all crashed and burned.

    As the information age progresses the conflicts will keep cropping up between the Red Flag Act which is copyright and the common sense and understanding of the public. And that conflict exponentiates every time technology expands into common use.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. icon
    Peter (profile), 27 May 2021 @ 2:18am

    Phrased differently

    If you have enough money to afford expensive lawyers, and enough time to wait for the outcome of the court procedures, the new German copyright leaves you some limited use of copyrighted materials.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    Jeroen Hellingman (profile), 8 Jun 2021 @ 12:11am

    Re:

    Lets reformulate that to "effectively commercially available, as shown by a the continued sale of copies to unrelated third parties, over which all applicable taxes have been paid."

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Erkin Alp Güney, 30 Aug 2021 @ 5:16am

    Re: Fair use

    No, EU has explicitly enumerated fair dealing exceptions. Not a broad fair use

    link to this | view in thread ]


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