EU Copyright Framework

2019-04-08

Given the latest developments, it's now less clear what the result in the upcoming EU Council vote will be. See the EU Council calculator for the latest details on the vote on April 15, 2019, and how some scenarios may play out.

2019-03-27

Yesterday, the EU parliament voted in favour of the controversial copyright directive, including articles 11 (now 15) and 13 (now 17). Except for this notice, the site remains unchanged for now, and does not reflect this latest development.

The vote to consider for instance deleting article 11 or 13 was extremely close: 312 in favour, 317 against. Some MEPs, for instance the Sweden Democrats, say they pressed the wrong button during the vote, which contributed to this result.

The proposal will now be considered by the Council of the European Union, where it is expected to be approved, likely sometime in April, 2019.

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, has severe concerns about the decision of the European Parliament today.

Updated 2019-03-23

The European Parliament should remove articles 11 and 13 from the Copyright Directive

The Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive proposal aims to adapt the EU copyright framework to new realities. In our opinion the proposal fails in doing this, and unless both articles 11 and 13 are removed, it is better if the entire proposed directive is rejected.

When is the vote?

According to the plenary agenda, the vote will take place on Tuesday March 26, 2019, somewhere between 12:30 and 14:30 CET (11:30 - 13:30 UTC).

Call to action

Inform yourself and – politely – call your Member of the European Parliament. Explain to them why they should vote against both articles 11 and 13, and why they should vote to reject the entire proposed directive unless both articles are removed.

You'll find more details on the Q&A page and in the in-depth analysis.

In short:

Currently, copyright on the Internet is governed by article 14 of the eCommerce directive. It provides balance, as it does not allow mandatory filtering, instead sharing the responsibility for enforcement between rights holders and service providers. This greatly contributed to the growth of the Internet.

Article 13 would overturn that balance as, in practice, it would force platforms to filter user content uploaded to their sites. This comes with false positives that undermine the public domain and copyright's limitations and exceptions, with negative effects on education, journalism, human rights activism, memes and remix art in general.

Article 11 suppresses linking to news.

We believe the European Parliament should at least remove articles 11 and 13. Unless both of the articles are removed from the directive, the Parliament should vote to reject the entire proposed directive.