EC Unveils Action Plan to Deal with Crucial Online Content Issues

The European Commission plans to deal with troublesome online content issues starting next year, it said Wednesday after an “orientation debate” called by President José Manuel Barroso. With Europe’s digital economy predicted to grow seven times faster than its overall gross domestic product in the next few years, the EC wants to ensure that copyright rules work in the digital context, it said. Parallel tracks will deal next year with several issues where quick progress is needed, with decisions coming in 2014, it said. The EC hasn’t really tackled those matters until now, focusing instead on studies and limited topics such as collective licensing and orphan works, EC sources said. But the Digital Agenda mid-term review, due Dec. 19, is expected to name copyright reform as a top priority, and government leaders want concrete acts to spur the digital single market. There wasn’t enough work being done on the critical issues, and then the polarized focus on enforcement in the context of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) made things worse, they said.

Telecom and mobile operators and ISPs urged the EC to help them make legal Internet offers available, while cable companies said a technology-neutral approach to content provision is needed. Consumers thanked the EC for backing ambitious copyright reform. Copyright for Creativity, which represents libraries, scientific and research institutions, consumers digital rights groups, tech companies and educational bodies, said merely changing licensing rules won’t help.

The action plan seeks to build a modern copyright system that guarantees that rights owners are remunerated, opens up more access and a wider choice of legal offerings, allows new business models to emerge, and helps fight piracy and illegal services, the EC said. Stakeholder dialogues next year will address six issues where urgent progress is needed. One is cross-border portability of content, which raises questions about the territoriality of copyright protections. A second area is user-generated content, where the issue is how users know whether their use of particular materials needs consent and, if so, how to get it.

Another area for talks is data- and text-mining, such as when researchers analyze and find patterns in existing scientific literature, the EC said. Besides needing a license for access to this content, such mining also requires permission from every rights-holder to copy and reformat each of the huge number of works used for the analysis. Private copy levies on products capable of making copies is another area of contention, the EC said. Twenty EU countries impose levies, causing the prices of products to vary widely across borders and angering manufacturers, it said. Other topics are the inadequate cross-border access to online audiovisual works such as movies and TV shows, and the fact that many European cultural heritage works remain unavailable to Europeans, it said. Discussion will explore the possibility of new content licensing arrangements and technological solutions, it said.

In the longer term, the EC will do market studies and impact assessments to try to come to a decision in 2014 about whether legislative reform is needed, it said. It will consider how to mitigate the effects of territoriality in Europe’s internal market and how closely national laws should be harmonized. Talks will also include limitations and exceptions to copyright in the digital sphere, how to reduce the fragmentation in Europe’s copyright market, and how to make enforcement more effective in the context of broader copyright reform.

Old systems of copyright licensing need rethinking, said the European Competitive Telecommunications Association, European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association, European Internet Services Providers’ Association and GSM Association. The old mechanisms “will only further strengthen the monopolistic position of large exclusive rights managers standing in the middle of the value chain,” they said. They urged the EC to “address the causes of the problems instead of the symptoms,” saying a sustainable approach to intellectual property rights lies in the development of content services that are available at affordable prices and based on new business model that meet consumer expectations and demand. Existing laws strike the right balance among the different interests and enforcement changes should be a last resort, they said.

European rules must “pursue genuine technology neutrality” to ensure that all market players have an equal chance, Cable Europe said. That means that outdated and technology-based measures such as the 1993 satellite and cable directive should be updated to a more proportional and economics-based copyright system that will spur new business models, it said. Rules should protect content, with less emphasis on how it’s delivered, it said.

"Ambitious copyright reform is no longer a taboo,” said the European Consumers’ Organization. It wants laws that stop consumers from accessing legally bought content on other devices and platforms revamped. Moreover, it said, the recent ACTA debate showed that “strong-arm enforcement of inadequate laws erodes public support for copyright.” Infringement is wrong but its illegality is a symptom of the dearth of legal online offerings, it said. “This final, high-level push is a critical point” in addressing the root causes of many problems facing consumers, it said.

In a Nov. 30 letter (http://xrl.us/bn4x7j) to the 27 EU commissioners, Copyright for Creativity said the emphasis on licensing doesn’t “adequately reflect the complexity of this debate.” It plays an important role, but a “fact based assessment of alternatives to licensing, particularly exceptions and limitations, is also required to establish appropriate balance,” the letter said. Among other things, signers want better access to e-books for lending purposes, and copyright exceptions that are harmonized across EU counties.