AMEC and FIBEP, the two worldwide trade bodies representing companies in media monitoring and intelligence have accused the European Commission of a “cruel lack of ambition” in its proposals for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.
In a joint statement with, Florian Laszlo, Secretary General, FIBEP & CEO, OBSERVER AMEC said the Directive “moves in the wrong direction on many crucial points and as a result the reforms would not meet its objectives of allowing copyright to enter the digital age.”
Text and Data Mining mandatory exception too restrictive
The AMEC FIBEP statement said that the Text and Data Mining (TDM) would become a mandatory exception in all EU countries. However, despite this, the Commission had decided to severely limit it to public research organisations for the purposes of both non-commercial and commercial scientific research.
In the AMEC/FIBEP statement said: “The rules should be the same for everyone without establishing a difference between the public scientific research sector and other business activities. The limitation to public research is unfairly hampering the activities of the taxpaying companies and creates more legal uncertainties, as the line where “public“ begins and ends is not easily drawn.”
The AMEC/FIBEP statement continued: “We are campaigning for the TDM exception to be mandatory for anybody who has lawful access for any purposes. Such a larger mandatory exception would be essential to develop digital innovative services for media monitoring and measurement activities. We argue this would not conflict with a normal exploitation of the works and would not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the right holders; as long as the results of the text and data mining operations would not replace the mined content itself.”
New publishers right a failed idea
AMEC and FIBEP say Commissioner Oettinger’s plan to introduce new rights in favour of news publishers is “incompatible with a fair market and detrimental on media monitoring activities.”
The AMEC and FIBEP statement said: “We already pay copyright to publishers (who are generally the copyright holders on information works because they obtain it from the authors) in several countries for the use of digital copies of information works.
In the Commission’s proposal because the publishers would own both their publishers’ rights and the copyright, an increase in prices of the licences in order to cover both categories of rights would be inevitable and highly damageable for innovation and creativity in this sector, and risks squeezing out several start-ups and medium companies.
AMEC and FIBEP believe that far from confronting the real underlying problems, the Directive would actually be unable to fix the publishers’ difficulties to sign licences with big online services providers
Again big companies, mostly non-European, would profit from the ruling, as Germany and Spain have amply proven. To dare to put such a failed idea into the legislative process is detrimental to the European citizens. The media might need help in a digital world, but an unqualified attempt to keep the clock from ticking, would have the opposite effect and harm European digital companies again. The adversaries meant by this law, will grow even stronger by it.”
AMEC and FIBEP believe that legal uncertainty will remain and small and medium online service providers, as the media monitoring organisations, will be the only ones that keep paying.
Their joint statement asserts: “The Commission’s reform is a failed opportunity since it misses essential points. AMEC and FIBEP constantly recommend clarifying the definition of “communication to the public” and “temporary copy” as well as all exceptions mandatory for the EU Member States. This is the sine qua non condition in order to create a fair environment in the digital era.
AMEC-FIBEP will keep working to convince the European legislators that it is utmost importance to make copyright fit for the digital age. It is for the benefit of society as a whole.”