Europe's Copyright Reform: What Is So Controversial?

• Author: Sarah Blair
• Position: Sarah Blair is an associate with Bristows LLP in London. She specializes in commercial, technology, and intellectual property litigation. She can be reached at sarah.blair@bristows.com.
• Pages: 14-17

Published in Landslide® magazine, Volume 11, Number 4, a publication of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL), ©2019 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

By Sarah Blair

What Is So

Controversial?

The last two years have seen ferocious lobbying in relation

to what many call Europe’s proposed “copyright reform”

law. Following the European Commission’s implementa-

tion of its Digital Single Market (DSM) strategy, a draft

copyright directive (a European legislative act that mem-

ber states of the European Union (EU) must enact into their national

laws) was proposed in September 2016 and has since been making

its way through the European legislative process. It has engaged the

likes of Paul McCartney, Adele, Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, and U.S.

tech giants such as Google and Facebook, as opinions have been

voiced in support of or in opposition to the draft directive. Seen by

some to be a necessary tool to rebalance the rights of content cre-

ators against the power of Silicon Valley tech giants, it has been

purported by others to signify the destruction of the Internet and the

so-called “death of the meme.” So controversial was the initial draft

text of the proposed directive that the European Parliament voted

against it in July 2018. However, following various amendments—

which still leave many of its opponents concerned—September saw

the amended text being adopted. The proposed directive has moved

to the nal stage before the vote, expected to be in spring 2019, to

decide whether it is (or, less likely, is not) enacted into EU law.

Europe’s

Copyright

Reform

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