EU Commission Hid Yet Another Report That Showed Its Assumptions About Copyright Were Wrong

from the evidence-based-policymaking dept

For many years we've criticized copyright policymakers who rely on "faith-based" policymaking. That is, they believe that copyright is inherently "good" and refuse to consider any evidence showing harms from copyright that is too strong, or refuse to concede that there may be better ways to create incentives or to remunerate creators beyond copyright. The idea of actually having evidence-based copyright has long seemed like a pipedream -- and apparently the EU Commission would like to keep it that way. Back in September, we wrote about how the EU Commission spent $400,000 on a study that showed unauthorized downloads had little impact on sales -- and then refused to release the report, recognizing that it would undermine the narrative they were pushing in trying to expand anti-piracy laws.

And, now, another such "buried" report has been discovered. As with the last one, this new report was discovered by Pirate Party EU Parliament Member Julia Reda, though she used the standard EU Freedom of Information process that anyone else could have used. After discovering that last report, she made a request for all copyright related studies that the EU Commission had requested since 2013, even if they were unpublished. That initial request listed out some papers that were still in progress -- including the one that Reda has now released. This study is one that a lot of news publishers almost certainly wished would have never seen the light of day -- which might explain why the EU Commission kept it buried.

The report focuses on the question of news aggregators and what impact they're having on news publishers. As you may recall, publishers around the globe -- but especially in Europe -- have been insisting that aggregators like Google News are somehow responsible for their own business failures, and are demanding that Google pay them for the awful crime of sending them traffic. The fact that these publishers could easily block Google from sending them traffic -- but refuse to do so -- reveals that they really do find that traffic valuable. But they still want payments on top of it, and will continue to demonize Google News and other aggregators until they get it. And, indeed, the EU Commission continues to suggest that forcing aggregators to pay publishers would be a good idea.

But, perhaps not surprisingly, the study that the Commission requested shows the exact opposite of what the publishers claim. Looking at situations in Spain and Germany -- both countries that tried to force Google to pay -- gives some real world evidence that is inconvenient for publishers and those pushing for these kinds of laws:

The available empirical evidence shows that news aggregators have a positive impact on news publishers' advertising revenue.

The research goes through a number of different empirical studies to conclude this. It notes that there are two competing forces, and the empirical question is which force wins out. News publishers insist that aggregators work as a substitute for their sites, while aggregators (and others!) insist that they're complementary, and that news aggregators drive more traffic, which the publishers can then monetize. It then cites a whole bunch of studies presenting empirical evidence that the complementary effects far outweigh the substitution effects. As the paper concludes:

We can conclude from this overview that the studies published so far contain no empirical evidence in support of the substitution hypothesis and thus no evidence that online aggregators have a negative impact on original newspaper publishers' revenue. On the contrary, the evidence shows that aggregators may actually be complements to newspaper websites and may help consumer discover more news and boost the number of visits.

All of this seems like, damn, it would be kind of useful if you were trying to create good copyright policy. But instead the report was completely buried and hidden, while the EU Commission to this day continues to push for policies that insist the substitution effect is stronger than the complementary effect. Even though the evidence that the very same Commission asked for shows that's untrue.

So, once again, it's feeling like evidence-based copyright remains a pipedream. What's unfortunate, though, is that in the past we felt it was a pipedream because no one was willing to do the research. Now it appears it's a pipedream because policymakers, when shown the evidence, will do everything possible to hide it, rather than to use it to create more effective and reasonable copyright laws.

Filed Under: aggregators, copyright, eu commission, google tax, julia reda, link tax, news, news aggregators, snippet tax

Leaked Plans Shows Top EU Body Backing Copyright Industry Against The Public, The Internet, And Innovation

from the whatever-happened-to-Estonia's-deep-understanding-of-digital? dept

Techdirt has been covering the slow and painful attempts by the EU to make its copyright laws fit for the digital age for nearly four years now. Along the way, there have been some good ideas, and an astonishingly bad one that would require many online services to filter all uploads to their sites for potential copyright infringements. Despite the widespread condemnation of what is now Article 13 in the proposed Copyright Directive, an important new leak (pdf) published on the Statewatch site shows that EU politicians are still pushing to make the censorship filters mandatory.

The document is an attempt by Estonia, which currently holds the Presidency of the Council of the EU -- one of the three main European Union bodies -- to come up with a revised text for the new Copyright Directive. In theory, it should be a compromise document that takes into account the differing opinions and views expressed so far. In practice, it is a slap in the face for the EU public, whose concerns it ignores, while pandering to the demands of the EU copyright industry.

Estonia's problem is that the whole idea of forcing Web sites to filter uploads contradicts an existing EU directive, one from 2000 on e-commerce. This created a safe harbor for sites that were "mere conduits" or simply hosting material -- that is, took no active part in publishing material online. The Directive explicitly says:

Member States shall not impose a general obligation on providers, when providing the services covered by Articles 12, 13 and 14, to monitor the information which they transmit or store, nor a general obligation actively to seek facts or circumstances indicating illegal activity.

Most of the leaked document is a forlorn attempt to circumvent this unequivocal ban on upload filters:

In order to ensure that rightholders can exercise their rights, they should be able to prevent the availability of their content on such [online] services, in particular when the services give access to a significant amount of copyright protected content and thereby compete on the online content services' market. It is therefore necessary to provide that information society service providers that store and give access to a significant amount of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users take appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure the protection of copyright protected content, such as implementing effective technologies.

It is reasonable to expect that this obligation also applies when information society service providers are eligible for the limited liability regime provided for in Article 14 of Directive 2000/31/EC [for hosting], due to their role in giving access to copyright protected content. The obligation of measures should apply to service providers established in the Union but also to service providers established in third countries, which offer their services to users in the Union.

In other words, even though Article 14 of the E-commerce Directive provides a safe harbor for companies hosting content uploaded by users, the EU wants to ignore that and make online services responsible anyway, and to require upload filtering, even though that is forbidden by Article 15. Moreover, this would apply to non-EU companies -- like Google and Facebook -- as well. The desperation of the Estonian Presidency is evident in the fact that it provides not one, but two versions of its proposal, with the second one piling on even more specious reasons why the E-commerce Directive should be ignored, even though it has successfully provided the foundation of Internet business activity in the EU for the last 17 years.

Jettisoning that key protection will make it far less likely that startups will choose the EU for their base. The requirement to filter every single upload for potential infringements will probably be impossible, and certainly prohibitively expensive, while the legal risks of not filtering will be too great. So the Estonian Presidency is essentially proposing the death of online innovation in the EU -- rather ironic for a country that prides itself for being in the digital vanguard.

The leaked document also contains two proposals for Article 11 of the Copyright Directive -- the infamous link tax. One takes all the previous bad ideas for this "ancillary copyright", and makes them even worse. For example, the new monopoly right would apply not just to text publications in any media -- including paper -- but also to photos and videos. In addition, it would make hyperlinks subject to this new publisher's "right". The only exceptions would be those links not involving what is termed a "communication to the public" -- a concept that is so vague that even the EU's top courts can't agree what it means. The other proposal completely jettisons the idea of any kind of link tax, and instead wants to introduce "a presumption for publishers of press publications":

in the absence of proof to the contrary, the publisher of a press publication shall be regarded as the person entitled to conclude licences and to seek application of the measures, procedures and remedies … concerning the digital use of the works and other subject-matter incorporated in such a press publication, provided that the name of the publisher appears on the publication.

This is something that has been suggested by others as providing the best solution to what publishers claim is a problem: the fact that they can't always sue sites for alleged copyright infringement of material they have published, because their standing is not clear. It effectively clarifies that existing copyright law can be used to tackle abusive re-posting of material. As such, it's a reasonable solution, unlike the link tax, which isn't.

The fact that two such diametrically-opposed ideas are offered in a document that is meant to be creating a clear and coherent way forward is an indication of what a mess the whole EU Copyright Directive project remains, even at this late stage. Unfortunately, the Estonian Presidency's unequivocally awful drafts for Article 13 suggest that the EU is still planning to bring in a law that will be bad for the Internet, bad for innovation, and bad for EU citizens.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: copyright, copyright directive, estonia, eu, filtering, intermediary liability, link tax, monitoring

First And Only Snippet Tax Deal In Spain Is With Big Supporter Of Snippet Tax In Germany

from the maybe-just-a-coincidence dept

Two years ago, Techdirt wrote about an industry study of Spain's "Google tax", which requires a Web site to pay for sending traffic to publishers when it quotes snippets of their texts. Just as everyone who actually understands the Internet predicted, Spain's new law had a disastrous effect on the publishing industry there, especially on smaller companies. Despite that unequivocal evidence, the law is still in place, and it's a further sign of how pointless it is that only now has the Spanish Center for Reprographic Rights (Cedro) finally managed to sign up its first deal with a news aggregator, called Upday (original in Spanish). Cedro is claiming that this "pioneering" move possesses a "strategic importance" because it recognizes the rights of those whose publications appear elsewhere as snippets.

The fact that it has taken so long to find anyone willing to accept that point is bad enough, but it gets worse. Upday operates across Europe, and was launched in Spain at the beginning of March this year. It turns out to be a partnership between Axel Springer and Samsung. As Techdirt readers may recall, the giant publishing group Axel Springer is one of the biggest supporters of the Google tax in Germany. Initially, it tried to take a hard line against the US search company. But Axel Springer was soon forced to back down humiliatingly and offer Google a free license to post snippets from its publications. A two-week experiment without search engine leads caused Web traffic to Axel Springer's sites to plunge.

So, far from being a "pioneering" move that validates the whole snippet tax approach in Spain, Upday's deal with Cedro is simply a key German supporter of this daft idea trying to give the impression that the moribund Spanish Google tax is still twitching somewhat. It's pretty clear why Axel Springer and Cedro would be keen to do that now, after years of nothing happening in Spain. The European Union is currently revising the main EU Copyright Directive. Article 11 of the proposed text is an EU-wide version of the snippet tax, despite the fact that the idea has failed miserably everywhere that it has been tried. The agreement between Upday and Cedro will presumably be used as "evidence" that the Google tax is "working" in Spain. The fact that it is a "circular" deal between German and Spanish supporters of the idea proves the exact contrary.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: germany, google tax, link tax, snippet tax, spain
Companies: axel springer, google

EU Copyright Proposal: Not Good, But Not As Blatantly Terrible As It Could Have Been

from the yes,-but...-how-about-doing-it-right? dept

We recently warned that there were efforts underway to make the EU's copyright reform proposal even more draconian and ridiculous. Thankfully, the "compromise," which wasn't a compromise at all and would have made things much worse, was rejected by the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) committee, but there was still plenty of bad stuff to be concerned about.

The mandatory filtering (i.e., mandatory censorship) regime for internet platforms was rejected. That's a good thing. But, on the flip side, the so-called "link tax" requiring payments from those who link to and aggregate news to news publishers has moved forward. Two other small bits of good news were also included: the "freedom of panorama" allowing people to photograph buildings and sculptures without violating someone's copyright and also a "remix right" that will protect the public from doing basic remixing of copyright-covered works. There are still concerns about the "text and data mining" rules which limit what content can be acquired.

So, basically, it's a mixed bag. Some, of course, will argue that any "compromise" will involve some good and some bad, but that assumes that we need a compromise here. Why not aim for creating a policy that's actually better overall, rather than a "compromise" solution? Europe has the chance to lead the way, but appears to have little interest in doing so. Either way, there's still more to go in this process, and other committees to approve things, so the policy still has a long way to go. Hopefully, by the end it pushes more and more to being true copyright reform, rather than just "propping up old industries" reform.

Filed Under: copyright, data mining, eu, eu parliament, filters, google tax, link tax, remix right

EU Parliament Dumps Link Tax, Invites News Publishers To Sue If They Think Google's Making Them Broke

from the won't-hold-my-breath-for-production-of-evidence dept

Last summer, Mike reported the EU Commission was about to institute a "link tax" on news snippets. In essence, the tax would have punished search engines for sending traffic TO news sites. Not only is that part of it a stupid, backwards idea, but previous attempts by European countries to institute link/Google taxes were abject failures, resulting in Google refusing to list taxed news articles in its search results.

Readers were invited to comment on the proposed tax. It's not clear whether those comments were heard above the overly-confident dull roar of industry lobbyists, but whatever the turning point was, the link tax idea is dead. What's being offered to publishers is something completely different: an opportunity to sue Google, et al for supposed infringement.

The decision by copyright rapporteur and European People’s Party MEP Therese Comodini Cachia is a mixed result for European publishers, who had lobbied for legislation allowing them to charge companies like Google and Yahoo when they display parts of their articles, including headlines and snippets.

While the proposed measure falls short of that ambition, it would create a legal channel through which publishers would be able to attempt to enforce their claims. “Press publishers are given the right to bring proceedings in their own name before tribunals against infringers of the rights held by the authors of the works contained in their press publication,” reads the report.

Say goodbye to ancillary rights and hello to pointless litigation. The latter is the better idea, though. This puts the burden on news agencies to show they've been harmed by increased referral traffic. This proposal isn't making many European publishers happy.

“Comodini’s draft report fails to deliver for press publishers,” said Wout van Wijk, executive director of industry association News Media Europe. “All that this will potentially do is lead to more litigation.”

Publishers don't have to sue. It's not mandatory. They could just sit back and enjoy the additional traffic. As the EU Parliament points out in its proposal, Google's news snippets aren't "necessarily disproportionately harmful" to publishers and may very well increase traffic to their sites and provide them with new subscribers. It's pretty much impossible to present evidence of harm when there's no evidence to be had. The whole "link tax" idea rests on publishers' unfounded claims Google, etc. are responsible for the financial woes of the continent's new agencies. There are multiple factors to consider, but publishers seem to focus solely on Google, as if news publishers and Google were engaged in a zero sum profitability game.

The report also points out a link tax might have a chilling effect on thousands of citizens who have nothing to do with the search engine giant. Its report notes the non-commercial sharing of links is an important part of societal communication and levying a tax on sharing is no way to encourage speech. Shifting the burden of proof to publishers challenges them to put their theoretically "lost" money where their mouths are… which is the way it should be.

Filed Under: ancillary copyright, eu, eu parliament, google tax, link tax, platforms, publishers
Companies: google

EU Announces Absolutely Ridiculous Copyright Proposal That Will Chill Innovation, Harm Creativity

from the how-hard-did-they-work-to-make-it-this-bad? dept

This is not a surprise given the earlier leaks of what the EU Commission was cooking up for a copyright reform package, but the end result is here and it's a complete disaster for everyone. And I do mean everyone. Some will argue that it's a gift to Hollywood and legacy copyright interests -- and there's an argument that that's the case. But the reality is that this proposal is so bad that it will end up doing massive harm to everyone. It will clearly harm independent creators and the innovative platforms that they rely on. And, because those platforms have become so important to even the legacy entertainment industry, it will harm them too. And, worst of all, it will harm the public greatly. It's difficult to see how this proposal will benefit anyone, other than maybe some lawyers.

Not surprisingly, the EU Commission is playing up the fact that this package does knock down some geoblocking in setting up more of a "single market" for digital content, but after Hollywood started freaking out about it, that proposal got watered down so much that plenty of content will still be geo-blocked. And there's so much other stuff in here that's just really, really bad. As expected, it includes a ridiculous ancillary copyright scheme, which should really just be called the "Google tax" for linking to copyright-covered content.

The proposal does away with the liability limitations for platforms, effectively requiring any tech platform that allows user-generated/user-uploaded content to build or license their very own ContentID system. This is ridiculous. If the idea was to punish Google, this will do the opposite. Basically no startup will be able to afford this, and it will just lock in platforms like YouTube as the only option for content creators wishing to upload video. Protecting intermediary liability has been shown, time and time again, to enable new innovation and also to enable greater creativity and free speech -- and the EU Commission basically just tossed it in the garbage because some Hollywood interests think (incorrectly) that internet companies "abuse" the protections.

The EU Commission barely hides the fact that they're doing this to try to protect legacy industries while punishing innovative ones:

The Copyright Directive aims to reinforce the position of right holders to negotiate and be remunerated for the online exploitation of their content on video-sharing platforms such as YouTube or Dailymotion. Such platforms will have an obligation to deploy effective means such as technology to automatically detect songs or audiovisual works which right holders have identified and agreed with the platforms either to authorise or remove.

Newspapers, magazines and other press publications have benefited from the shift from print to digital and online services like social media and news aggregators. It has led to broader audiences, but it has also impacted advertising revenue and made the licensing and enforcement of the rights in these publications increasingly difficult.The Commission proposes to introduce a new related right for publishers, similar to the right that already exists under EU law for film producers, record (phonogram) producers and other players in the creative industries like broadcasters.

The new right recognises the important role press publishers play in investing in and creating quality journalistic content, which is essential for citizens' access to knowledge in our democratic societies. As they will be legally recognised as right holders for the very first time they will be in a better position when they negotiate the use of their content with online services using or enabling access to it, and better able to fight piracy. This approach will give all players a clear legal framework when licensing content for digital uses, and help the development of innovative business models for the benefit of consumers.

The proposal also includes a new "exception" for text and data mining -- which sounds like it could be a good thing, but even it was designed in a manner to "protect" legacy publishers, and which will seriously harm smaller innovators and researchers. The exception is only limited to those engaging in scientific research, meaning that any other kind of research that involves data mining is at risk in the EU. Basically, the EU just gave away that entire important and growing innovative industry. Almost all of the major work in AI and machine learning these days involves data mining, and the EU just told all those companies to go find a new home.

Just looking around at various European-based organizations, they're pretty much agreed that this is a complete disaster. Here's Communia, saying "this is not how you fix copyright."

Today’s proposal buries the hope for a more modern, technologically neutral and flexible copyright framework that the Commission had hinted at in its initial plans for the Digital Single Market. The proposal largely ignores crucial changes to copyright that would have benefitted consumers, users, educators, startups, and cultural heritage institutions. It also abandons the idea of a digital single market that allows all Europeans the same rights to access knowledge and culture. Finally, it completely ignores the importance of protecting and expanding the public domain.

And here's EDRi, saying that the proposal "fails at every level."

The European Commission has proposed a Copyright Directive that could not conceivably be worse. The text that was launched today includes a proposal to potentially filter all uploads to the Internet in Europe. The draft text would destroy users’ rights and legal certainty for European hosting companies. The new Directive’s proposal for a new 20-year “ancillary” copyright for “news” outlets repeats painful mistakes made in Germany and Spain, which hurt publishers and Internet users alike.

“We need a copyright reform to make Europe fit for the 21st century. We now have a proposal that is poison for European’s free speech, poison for European business and poison for creativity”, said Joe McNamee, Executive Director of European Digital Rights. “It could not conceivably be worse.”

And here's EU Parliament member Marietje Schaake, noting how wrong this approach is:

It lacks ambition and instead reads like a defence of old business models. We need a real copyright revolution instead. Publishers might have legitimate concerns about their decreasing revenues, but a retrograde reform of copyright law is not the solution.

So the EU Commission has taken the exact wrong approach. It's one that's almost entirely about looking backwards and "protecting" old ways of doing business, rather than looking forward, and looking at what benefits the public, creators and innovators the most. If this proposal actually gets traction, it will be a complete disaster for the EU innovative community. Hopefully, Europeans speak out, vocally, about what a complete disaster this would be.

Filed Under: ancillary copyright, contentid, copyright, eu, filtering, intermediary liability, link tax, text and data mining

Europe Is About To Create A Link Tax: Time To Speak Out Against It

from the speak-up dept

We've written plenty of times about ridiculous European plans to create a so-called "snippet tax" which is more officially referred to as "ancillary rights" (and is really just about creating a tax on Google). The basic concept is that some old school newspapers are so lazy and have so failed to adapt to the internet -- and so want to blame Google for their own failures -- that they want to tax any aggregator (e.g., Google) that links to their works with a snippet, that doesn't pay for the privilege of sending those publishers traffic. As you may remember, Germany has been pushing for such a thing for many, many years, and Austria has been exploring it as well. But perhaps the most attention grabbing move was the one in Spain, which not only included a snippet tax, but made it mandatory. That is, even if you wanted Google News to link to you for free, you couldn't get that. In response, Google took the nuclear option and shut down Google News in Spain. A study showed that this law has actually done much to harm Spanish publishers, but the EU pushes on, ridiculously.

As discussed a year ago, some in the EU Commission are all for creating an EU-wide snippet tax, and as ridiculous and counterproductive as that is, the Commission is about to make a decision on it, and the public consultation on the issue is about to close (it ends tomorrow). Thankfully, many, many different groups have set up nice and easy systems to understand and respond to the consultation -- which you should do. Here are just a few options:

• The EU Commission's own consultation platform (this one is messy, buggy, and annoying, but it's the official one).
• The site FixCopyright.eu has a well done "answering guide" that helps you through the consultation and explains the details behind many of the questions in the consultation.
• SaveTheLink.org from OpenMedia has a simple signup form that just adds your name to a letter.
• The group Allied for Startups has another good sign on letter Stop the link tax

There's also a good detailed discussion of why this snippet tax is the wrong solution from European copyright lawyer Remy Chavannes. Here's just a... um... snippet (that I didn't pay for):

In fact, there is precious little indication that the challenges currently being faced by press publishers are due to the lack of sufficiently broad intellectual property rights. And if insufficient IP rights are not a significant part of the problem, increasing IP rights is unlikely to be a significant part of the solution. At a recent conference in Amsterdam, speakers from publishers, academia, politics, civil society and the internet sector were in near-total agreement that a neighbouring right for publishers would solve nothing at best. It would seem more fruitful to investigate other ways in which the position and prospects of publishers of quality journalism can be increased, e.g. via subsidies, tax facilities, the partial repurposing of public broadcasting funds, or other measures that reflect the significant value to a democratic society of having a vigorous, free and independent press.

Implementation of a neighbouring right would bring significant uncertainty, costs and risks, not just to authors and publishers, but also to the eclectic group of platforms, intermediaries and other service providers that play a role in facilitating the publication, discovery and consumption of press content. Larger, existing broad-based platforms will be incentivised to reduce or remove service features that might trigger the new neighbouring right. New entrants are likely to be discouraged, particularly new entrants who want specifically to serve the market for finding and consuming press content. Depending on the scope of any neighbouring right, moreover, it could also negatively impact providers of social networks as well as providers of access, caching and hosting services. Increasing costs, complexity and uncertainty for such a broad category of service providers threatens the free flow of information and investment in – and availability of – innovative digital services, as well as the commercial prospects for publishers and authors.

Good stuff, and I urge you to read the whole thing -- and to respond to the consultation before the EU Commission destroys the link.

Filed Under: ancillary copyright, austria, copyright, eu, eu commission, germany, link tax, news, snippet tax, spain

EU Parliament Rejects Bad Proposals On Copyright Over Outdoor Photography And Links

from the good-move dept

In the past few weeks, we've discussed two particularly ridiculous proposals put forth by members of the European Parliament in the report that it is sending to the EU Commission for copyright reform across Europe. First was the proposal to remove freedom of panorama, which would allow countries to block the photography of certain buildings and structures, claiming that those photographs violated the rights of the architects. The second was a plan to support a link tax that would tax content aggregators like Google News for linking to content elsewhere.

Thankfully, both of these proposals were voted down, despite earlier indications that they might have enough support in Parliament. Either way, the real issue now is what proposal the EU Commission comes out with for copyright reform across the EU. Julia Reda who prepared the original report for the EU Parliament hopes that the EU Commission recognizes the importance of the public's rights in its eventual plan (though she continues to refer to them as "limitations" rather than the public's rights, as is more appropriate):

This decision embodies a central message of the report: Commissioner Oettinger cannot limit his upcoming reform proposals to improving conditions for cross-border trade. Reforming exceptions to copyright protection must be at the center of his initiative, since they fulfil such an essential, multi-facetted role: They provide creatives with the space to create new works, users with legal certainty for everyday activities, and access to culture and knowledge to everyone.

It calls for a reduction of geoblocking measures, particularly to allow cultural minorities to access content in their language online. The report asks for consideration of new exceptions for libraries and scientists when dealing with digital works, for example allowing e-lending. Creators should be strengthend in their negotiations with publishers, it states.

We'll see what actually comes out of the Commission, but Oettinger's comments in the past have not been encouraging. And, of course, other aspects of what was added to the report are just as troubling. Such as this:

Jean-Marie Cavada, a French member of the centrist ALDE group, amended the report to claim that “virtually all the value generated by creative works is transferred to… digital intermediaries, which refuse to pay authors or negotiate extremely low levels of remuneration.”

Needless to say, there's going to be a lot of fighting over the eventual proposal.

Filed Under: copyright, eu, eu parliament, freedom of panorama, google tax, julia reda, link tax, links, photography, snippet tax

EU Politicians Try To Create A New 'Link Tax' To Protect Newspapers Who Don't Like Sites Linking For Free

from the don't-do-this dept

Bad ideas never die. Although there have been some recent minor steps in a positive direction concerning copyright in the EU, politicians have been trying to undermine them with really terrible ideas. We already covered the push to effectively outlaw outdoor photography, and now it appears that (despite already having this proposal voted down), some are pushing for a so-called "ancillary copyright" concept, better known as a snippet tax or a link tax.

The basic idea here is that newspapers that have failed to innovate want to blame third party aggregators (mainly Google News) for somehow "damaging" their business because they link to stories with snippets, and then send traffic to those newspaper websites. We've spent years talking about how it's weird to complain about a giant site sending you traffic, but some old school publishers can't seem to get past the fact that Google is big and successful while their own sites are not -- and assume that means that Google somehow "stole" their revenue. In response, they've pushed ridiculous proposals to require anyone who aggregates content with links back to the original to pay a weird fee, above and beyond the traffic that they're sending.

These plans have backfired pretty much everywhere they've been tried. Because it's nonsensical to charge someone to send you more traffic, aggregators have done things like removing those publishers or removing snippets only to see howls of protest from those same publishers who previously claimed that such things were "stealing." In the most extreme case, in Spain, where a law was written that made it mandatory for such a link tax, Google News shut down completely -- once again leading to howls of protest from the newspapers who previously had been arguing that Google was somehow stealing from them. It's an odd sort of "stealing" where you'd run complaining to the government when it goes away.

Either way, all this leads to a silly and nonsensical resolution from MEP Angelika Niebler, working with a number of German MEPs (Germany is where the strongest push for a link tax has come from), arguing for a special new copyright right, which it claims is about supporting journalism:

Calls on the Commission to evaluate and come forward with a proposal on how quality journalism can be preserved, even in the digital age, in order to guarantee media pluralism, in particular taking into account the important role journalists, authors and media providers such as press publishers play with regard thereto

While not directly calling for a link tax (which Niebler had pushed in an earlier amendment that had been rejected), it's a pretty obvious attempt to open the door for such a link tax to return in the near future. In the link above, MEP Julia Reda notes that Niebler's own party, the European People's Party (EPP) had already agreed that no more amendments would be added -- but Niebler went ahead and added it anyway.

The good folks at OpenMedia are vocally opposing this amendment and have set up a site at SaveTheLink.org with more information. The EU Parliament will vote on this proposal tomorrow. While it won't determine what the eventual law is, it may help guide dangerous future proposals that could have serious consequences for how the internet works (or doesn't) in Europe.

It's time for major publishers to get over the fact that they've failed to innovate and failed to keep up with the way the internet works, while others have stepped in and done a better job. Blaming others for your failures is one thing. Looking to the government to change the way the internet and free expression work, just to try to squeeze money out of the companies who did innovate, is a cynical and backwards looking move. EU citizens and their elected officials should not allow it to happen.

Filed Under: ancillary tax, angelika niebler, eu, europe, google tax, journalism, julia reda, link tax, media, snippet tax