Streamlining the EU’s copyright mess

Date: 28/07/05

An overhaul of EU copyright rules will give particular weight to limiting additional costs to business, officials say.

The European Commission has embarked on a review of the first generation of EU copyright law, introduced as it became clear that the single market would require copyright harmonisation.

Traditionally, copyright has been governed by international agreements. The Berne Convention for the protection of literary and artistic works, for instance, was revised in 1971. A first generation of EU copyright legislation was passed in the early 1990s, covering the legal protection of computer programmes (1991), rental rights and lending rights (1992), satellite broadcasting and cable retransmission (1993), the duration of protection of authors' rights and neighbouring rights (1993) and the legal protection of databases (1996). The artist's resale right was not passed until 2001 but was part of the same generation.

All the time, the advance of the digital world and its copyright issues have been changing the landscape of intellectual property. The copyright sector represents more than 5% of European gross domestic product (GDP) and more than 3% of the EU workforce.

The biggest core industries are software, database industries and print media, each accounting for over 1% of GDP but copyright-dependent industries such as TV, DVD and computer manufacturers are also included in the sector.

More recently, the Commission embarked on a second generation of legislative proposals which were not limited to a particular sector or category of work or type of right. The directive on copyright in the information society was much broader in scope. It put into EU law the provisions of the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organisation Treaty. One of the difficulties has been that the implementation and enforcement of copyright law is still uneven across the member states. The enforcement directive sought to harmonise national laws.

The Commission has decided to update five of the eight directives adopted since 1991. Those on enforcement and resale will remain unchanged as they have not yet been fully implemented in the member states.

Tenders for two studies into the potential costs have been launched and the Commission hopes that the results will be published in the second half of 2006. A first policy debate beginning in autumn of next year. The Commission expects to make proposals in 2007.

But according to officials, the current Commission's drive for better regulation means that the recast may not just be a cleaning-up exercise to strip out any inconsistencies or overlap with other directives.

Depending on the indications from the impact assessment, one official says that some parts of the legislation "could be scrapped altogether".

The official says that competitiveness will also drive the decisions behind the balance struck between copyright holders needs and those of consumers.

"We have to decide whether increased competitiveness means giving more protection to copyright holders or making the rules more lax to allow people to benefit from easy access to works such as technology or education," says one Commission official.

Wes Himes, from the European Digital Media Association, says: "If a bid to make the laws more competitive equates to easier procurement of licences for distributors, that's something that we would welcome."

Article reports on the European Commission's plans to revise five of the eight directives adopted in the field of copyrights since 1991. A first policy debate was scheduled for the autumn of 2006, and the Commission was expecting to make proposals in 2007.

European Commission: DG Internal Market and Services: Copyright and Neighbouring Rights http://ec.europa.eu/comm/internal_market/copyright/index_en.htm

---