Our aim, with this project, is to present how the Directive  will either empower or hurt users and creators in the digital age. The rules that regulate creativity and sharing must be fair and take into account contemporary online activities and digital practices. Essentially, the internet needs to be for the people, and key legislation needs to be based on this principle.

In order to do this, we analysed nine different issues that are included (or have not been included) in the proposal for the Directive: Upload Filters, the Press Publishers Right, Text and Data mining, access to Cultural Heritage, Education, the protection of the Public Domain, a Right to Remix, Freedom of Panorama and Fair Remuneration for Authors and Performers. Each issue was then scored, allowing us to provide an overall score of the Directive based on an understanding of all elements of the proposal.

Too often, the Directive is reduced just to a few controversial issues: content filtering or a new right for publishers. These are clearly crucial issues, but it is important to understand that the Directive includes other rules that can also have massive effects on Europe’s research and science, education, cultural, or AI industry–just to name a few.

We decided to analyse the Directive through a particular lens: of the potential to either empower or hurt users and creators in the digital age. We are critical of views that the Directive simply attempts to regulate business relationships between two sectors, and that therefore the policy debate should be left to them. The Directive will have tremendous impact on all European citizens, who depend in all aspects of their lives on communication systems and digital tools that copyright law regulates.

The internet needs to be for the people. This means that core policies, like copyright law, need to be “for the people” by design. As our analysis shows, the final proposal for the Directive will likely be a legislative mixed bag. A range of positive developments concerning exceptions and limitations – rules that grant people the freedoms to use content for personal needs or public interest goals – are offered alongside other regulatory proposals that will have extremely adverse effects across all spheres of European society.

On Monday policy makers will have one more chance to fix some of the shortcomings of the proposed directive. Based on the current state of affairs it seems extremely unlikely that this will fundamentally alter the our negative overall assessment of the directive: Seen as a whole, the proposed Directive is bad, and will not make the internet work for European citizens.

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With all this attention for the wellbeing of individual creators it is surprising how little attention has been paid to another provision of the proposed copyright directive. Even worse, a proposal by the European Parliament to include a measure that would directly benefit authors and performers (at the expense of rightsholders pretending to act on their behalf) is currently is facing opposition from Member States.

Under the title “Measures to achieve a well-functioning marketplace for copyright” the Commission had proposed a number of measures aimed at strengthening the position of creators in contractual relationships with intermediaries. Specifically Article 14 introduces a transparency obligation for intermediaries towards rightsholders and Article 15 contains a contract adjustment mechanism intended to give creators some recourse if their works ends up being much more successful than originally envisioned and after which they have already signed their rights away.

From the get go these measures had been criticised by organisations representing performers as not strong enough to really improve the negotiation position of creators. These  have been advocating for an unwaivable right to receive equitable remuneration (something that we considered to be problematic because it would limit the ability of creators to use open licenses).

These calls for such an unwaivable right were ignored, but in september the European Parliament included the addition of a right to fair and proportionate remuneration. It is one of the few positive elements in an otherwise disastrous position. Where an unwaivable right would have made it impossible for creators to freely share their output (if they wanted to do so), the language proposed by the European Parliament should help to get more money into the hands of those creators that actually want it.

The new Article -14 (read “fourteen minus”) proposed by the European Parliament would require Member States to ensure “that authors and performers receive fair and proportionate remuneration for the exploitation of their works and other subject matter, including for their online exploitation“. This provision would be intended to ensure that creators get remunerated fairly in situations where currently they often have to sign away all their rights from the start, for any future use of their performances in return for inadequate compensation if any at all.

Creators need rights not filters

By granting a right to creators, Article -14 would significantly improve their negotiation position and ensure that they get a fair(er) share of the revenue generated by the exploitation of their works (think the money streaming services pay out to rightsholders). This stands in stark contrast to the approach taken by Article 13 which does not directly improve the situation of creators. Even if one assumes that Article 13 will somehow result in more income for rightsholders in the music industry (which as we have argued before is unlikely) that would not mean that this would also be passed on to the individual creators in whose name the fight for Article 13 is carried out.

If lawmakers want to be serious about improving the position of individual creators then they should support Article -14 which is much more meaningful from the perspective of creators. Unfortunately in the ongoing trilogue negotiations, Article -14 seems to be facing a lot of resistance from both the European Commission and the Member States, which is illustrative of the hypocrisy of the proponents of Article 13 who claim that they are acting in support of individual creators.

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