European Parliament adopts position on digital copyright rules

The European Parliament has voted to approve a position for talks with member states to hammer out a final deal on digital copyright rules. The measure was approved Sept. 12 by 438 votes to 226, with 39 abstentions.

Many of the parliament’s changes “aim to make certain that artists, notably musicians, performers and script authors, as well as news publishers and journalists, are paid for their work when it is used by sharing platforms such as YouTube or Facebook, and news aggregators such as Google News,” a news release from the parliament said.

Parliament’s position toughens the EU Commission’s proposed plans to make online platforms and aggregators liable for copyright infringements. This would also apply to snippets, where only a small part of a news publisher’s text is displayed, the European Parliament release said.  

“This is a great day not only for news publishers in Europe, but all over the world,” said David Chavern, CEO of the News Media Alliance, which represents over 2,000 news organizations in the U.S. and globally.

“The European Union is showing strong leadership in protecting the sustainability of high-quality journalism, and we hope that other countries follow suit in leveling the playing field between news publishers and online services. We encourage the EU to conclude the negotiations swiftly and to preserve a strong Article 11 in the final directive,” Chavern said. 

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