Article 11, Article 13 or Article 17: EU copyright with upload filter finally fixed

A few weeks ago the new EU copyright law was passed with a majority in the EU Parliament. At today's, last vote, each state could vote again separately for or against the law. With a majority, however, it could have been tilted. Now comes Article 13, including the upload filter.

It is now finally fixed: Article 13 or Article 17, including all other articles on the EU copyright law, is coming. This is what the EU states decided in today's vote with a majority. Starting today, all EU states have exactly two years to implement this regulation in their own country.

Clear majority for controversial law

A total of 19 states voted in favor (71%), six states (26%) were against. Three other states abstained from the law. Germany and Austria, among others, were in favor of the upcoming law. Countries such as Finland, Italy, Sweden and Luxembourg voted against. The EU dropouts (“Brexit”) were also in favor of the upcoming upload filter.

Here is the result, Germany is right #Copyright reform to, with that she is said goodbye: pic.twitter.com/umvoOhoyX3

- Julia Reda (@Senficon) April 15, 2019

Article 11 and Article 15 are equally critical

In addition to an upcoming upload filter with Article 13 and Article 17, there is a second article that has been greeted with much protest. This provides for an ancillary copyright for press publishers, whereby search engines, for example, have to pay publishers money when they display previews. This means that Google would currently be illegal in its current form (not just in the news section). However, this also includes a simple headline with a short text preview. In the future, you would have to acquire licenses for these "snippets" - and pay money to the publishers.

However, since most publishers do not want to do without traffic from Google, they quickly received exceptions to previous laws in Germany and Spain. It remains to be assumed that Google will not pay for this function (the mere display of a preview, the point of a search engine) in the future either. Either these services will simply no longer be offered for the entire EU (would be proeasily possible) or will consider another solution.

Vote

Now, as an opponent, you can do nothing more than vote out the parties that are in favor of EU copyright law in the EU election. In Austria, for example, citizens aged 16 and over are allowed to participate in the election, which will take place on May 26th - all others aged 18 and over. For opponents of the EU copyright reform, you can provide the relevant parties with the answer for the decision here. Otherwise it remains to be seen how the law will ultimately be implemented.