Policy Observatory
The European Commission is reconsidering introducing ancillary copyright
The European Commission is preparing a new attempt to force search engines and news portals pay media companies for promoting their freely accessible articles. Earlier attempts at establishing this principle resulted in Germany’s and Spain’s ancillary copyright laws for press publishers. These attempts backfired – with tremendous collateral damage.
According to a draft communication on copyright reform leaked yesterday (via IPKat), the Commission is considering putting the simple act of linking to content under copyright protection. This idea flies in the face of both existing interpretation and spirit of the law as well as common sense. Each weblink would become a legal landmine and would allow press publishers to hold every single actor on the Internet liable.
Country: EU
Domains: IPR
Stakeholder: European Bodies
Tags: Internet, draft communication, leaked document, ancillary copyright, European Commission, EU, IPR, liability, legislation