WND EXCLUSIVE

NEWS-SITE LINKS TARGETED IN EUROPEAN PLAN

'Modernization of rules could spell the end for many online services'

Bob Unruh

Alarms are being raised about a “just-leaked draft impact assessment” regarding an overhaul of copyright rules for Europe because they “could spell the end for many online services in Europe as we know them.”

The blunt assessment comes from the Electronic Frontier Foundation which surveyed the European Commission’s “Commission Staff Working Document Impact Assessment.”

Under the headline, “European copyright leak exposes plans to force the Internet to subsidize publishers,” EFF explained how the recommendations foreshadow what may become law throughout the European Union later.

The mandates “will ultimately bind each of the European Union’s 28 member states,” and if imposed as drafted, will make it so that “Europe’s Internet will never be the same, and these impacts are likely to reverberate around the world.”

The draft, 182 pages long, identifies its objectives, the ensure access to content, adapting copyright exceptions to the digital, and achieving a “well-functioning marketplace for copyright.”

The strategy assumes that copyright owners should share in any “value created” by online platforms, the report said.

“The theory is that because online platforms are doing rather well in the digital environment, and because traditional publishing industries are doing less well, this gives the publishers some kind of claim to share in the profits of the platforms,” the analysis said.

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Given that “questionable” starting point, EFF explained, the results are “ill-considered and harmful.”

One result is that it awards publishers “a new copyright-like veto power, layered on top of the copyright that already exists in the published content, allowing them to prevent the online reuse of news content even when a copyright exception applies. This veto power may last for as … many as 50 [years].”

“This kind of veto power has been described as a link tax – nothwithstanding the commission’s protestations that it isn’t one – because when the publisher controls even the use of small snippets of news text surrounding a hyperlink to the original article, it essentially amounts to a tax on that link.

“The result, as seen in Spain, will be the closure of online news portals, and a reduction in traffic to news publishers,” EFF warned.

“A new wrinkle on this link tax proposal is that the commission also proposes that publishers who have received a transfer of copyright from authors should also be entitled to collect revenue from whatever copyright levies member states may impose to ‘compensate’ authors for use of their content under copyright exceptions. The notion that ‘compensation’ is needed for users exercising their rights under copyright is a thoroughly perverse one … This addition to the link tax proposal is a gift to copyright collecting societies that will further increase the cost and complexity of lawfully reusing content.”

The plans also create convoluted liabilities when consumers upload any sort of content, from a movie clip to a song playing in the background of a home video, to the Web.

EFF noted the assessment isn’t law – yet.

“But it is a crystal clear indication from the European Commission about the content of the law that [it] is proposing to develop,” EFF said.

“We’ll have the best chance of stopping these misguided proposals if European officials are alerted to our concerns right away. They need to understand that Internet users won’t accept the ‘Shadow Regulation’ of intermediaries by requiring them to enter into expensive and error-prone arrangments with copyright owners for the automat[ic] flagging of user content. Neither will they accept a new ‘link tax’ for news publishers that could stifle the dissemination of news online,” EFF said.

The foundation previously had brought the issue before its constituents, including when the SaveTheLink.org campaign was created some months ago.

“Censoring or imposing costs or conditions on linking to information can be just as effective, and often easier, than controlling the information at its source. … Without the freedom to link, the World Wide Web falls apart into a mass of disconnected threats,” the group said then.

It warned at that point one of the most urgent threats was a plan to limit linking to news across Europe.

It warned even debate comments such as “linking may be prejudicial to the rights of the creator” could ripple down to cause real damage to ordinary people.

“They send the wrong message to the European Commission which will be preparing the next revision of the EU Copyright Directive. That false message is that Internet intermediaries such as search engines and Web hosts are enemies, rather than partners of content creators.”

When Spain took such action, only a couple years ago, and began demanding a “compulsory fee” for the use of text snippets that link to news reports, “Google News [shut] down in that country,” the report noted.

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Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/08/news-site-links-targeted-in-european-plan/#PBus3OF7Kg0IEA72.99