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Some things that annoy me (in no particular order):
- Brexit;
- Queueing for food;
- Airports;
- Housework;
- TV talent shows;
- Ads on YouTube*;
- Greedo shooting first; and,
- Article 13 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market 2016/0280(COD).
High levels of copyright protection are nothing new and European copyright legislation has traditionally made reference to this if you bother to read the recitals of the InfoSoc Directive (e.g. recitals 4 & 9). That’s pretty much turned out to be the case; nowadays the content industries seem to have every power at their disposal… ISPs bear responsibility for copyright infringement, injunctions have been readily granted, live injunctions are a thing, content recognition technology is operational and now, article 13 of the proposed Copyright Directive. It’s strange; copyright legislation isn’t actually focussing on, ‘piracy’ anymore. Hell, no-one’s even really talking about it much these days – who would steal a car when you can rent an Uber so who would download content when you can stream it?
Content streaming has been the prevalent form of consumption for a while now and revenues have been increasing in line with that. But this evolution has not been without its problems. The so-called ‘value gap’ has been gripe for the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) for a while now. In effect, this relates to the difference in revenue that intermediary platforms derive from their services compared to that which they pass on to the industry. From reading the IFPI reports from 2017 and 2018, YouTube often gets a mention in this regard and now they’re in the legislative crosshairs too. More than 20 years ago it was the creative industry (well, the music industry) against the downloaders and p2p sites, but nowadays it’s the tech giants themselves that seem to be regarded as the threat, or at least a US$856m’s-worth-of-revenue-generation-type-threat (according to the IFPI’s 2018 Global Music report on p27).
To address the fact that US$856m isn’t enough, article 13 proposes that ‘content sharing service providers’ authorise (i.e. pre-emptively licence) copyright-protected works uploaded by their users (which will necessarily have to be a posteriori blanket licences) that it communicates to the public. Where such authorisation is not granted, they will be liable for unauthorised communication of such works (and not subject to safe harbour provisions) unless they have made ‘best efforts’ to ensure the unavailability of said content. Plenty have claimed this latter condition, whilst not forcing such providers to filter what users are uploading, essentially leaves them with no other choice. They do it anyway – YouTube operates Content ID which is not without its own problems. Simply put though: licence everything and then filter anything rightholders won’t licence.
This has pretty obvious logistic, financial and technical issues so how have these sites responded? All we’ve seen here is a fairly limp YouTube ad* they’ve been running on their platform. So it must be bad. And everyone hates ads on YouTube anyway*. It’s also a bit of a quiet reaction compared to the Internet going ‘dark’ a few years ago over the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US.
Copyright has always mediated the relationship users have had with the content they consume. It enabled these things to be bought and sold, has allowed us to make lawful uses of them, and has limited how much control right-holders can exercise over them too . No longer. Now, the need to licence and/or filter everything suggests a further layer(s) of control which nothing to do with copyright – instead, it’s all about contracts. Copyright operates only to enable online intermediaries to govern and control what we listen to and watch through ‘take it or leave it’ licences and now we’ll probably have even more of them following article 13. As Julia Reda claims, this as a consequence vested interests which have been prevalent in the content industry since the beginning of time. Independent voices have no room to speak and are given no credence – not even author’s whose interests the Directive purports to support.
The Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market has gathered plenty of academic interest and my research student and colleague Ruth has blogged about it here too. I guess for me, just because I’m interested in copyright law and teach it, that doesn’t ever mean I like all/any of it. Article 13 certainly doesn’t change that, but I hate what copyright is becoming – it represents an increasing boundary between content that copyright protects and users who consume it. Right, I’m off to queue for some food.
About the author:
Nick was born and raised in Northern Ireland and graduated from Queen's University, Belfast in 2005 with an LLB in Law and Politics before coming to UEA in 2005/06 to study an LLM in International Commercial and Business Law. Having grown up in the Napster era, he became especially interested in copyright issues which led him to return to UEA to undertake a PhD in the area of digital copyright law. He joined the Law School as a full time lecturer in August 2011.
Nick completed his doctoral thesis in 2012 entitled, 'Digital Copyright Law: exploring the changing interface between copyright and regulation in the digital environment'. His interests include digital copyright law, technology and Internet regulation generally, and with specific regard to the music industry. He has also presented his research extensively at BILETA, SLSA, MeCSSA and ORGCon conferences as well as having published articles in the field.
Nick is also a self-confessed Star Wars fan and every year he also puts himself through the inevitable rollercoaster ride of supporting Tottenham Hotspur. Outside of this, he enjoys playing the drums and if he wasn't an academic, he would like to be a rock star.