Internal splits threaten online copyright deal

Date: 04/12/1997

By Peter Chapman

EUROPEAN Commission hopes of launching a proposed directive on information society copyright before the new year could be dashed by internal divisions over the issue.

Amid a flurry of lobbying, political aides from all sides in a debate which is pitching Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti against Telecoms Commissioner Martin Bangemann are trying to craft a compromise deal in time for the next meeting of the full Commission on Wednesday (10 December).

"Both sides will dig into the trenches on this," said one telecoms industry source.

Others are suggesting that Bangemann has succeeded in winning a number of changes to earlier drafts of the online copyright rules which will please the telecoms and computer hardware industries anxious to avoid regulations which could leave them open to legal claims for copyright liability.

The key change, they say, is a move to exempt temporary copies which are 'integral to a technological process' from copyright rules. Bangemann has succeeded in removing a proposed clause from the draft directive which would have limited such an exemption only to uses of work which were 'authorised or otherwise permitted by law'.

Telecom operators and hardware companies have long argued that they need to be free to make these temporary copies, and that networks such as the Internet cannot function without information being temporarily stored when it moves between the computer servers that hold data.

But they argue that they cannot keep track of the data that their networks hold, and so should not be made liable for any copyright abuses committed by the users of their services.

It is, however, far from certain that the amendment won by Bangemann will be supported by the full Commission. Content industry lobbyists, angry at what they see as a major threat to their rights, are bombarding Commissioners and their aides to get the move overturned.

Allen Dixon of the Business Software Alliance, which combats software piracy in the industry, described the latest proposals as a "route to bankruptcy" for the software, video, music and publishing industries planning to offer online services.

"If you have an online news service for example, does this mean that you have lost control over it?" he said. "I think the Commission has made this change in order to reach a balanced compromise - they have not realised what this will do to a lot of our business in the future."

Dixon, along with other content industry representatives, argues that the liability issue should not be dealt with in this copyright directive at all.

"It is like sticking a square peg in a round hole," he insisted, adding that a separate liability directive scheduled to be unveiled next year should address the telecom operators' fears.

If content industry lobbying pays off, it could delay Commission agreement on the proposals until after the new year, ironically slowing progress on a directive which this sector itself is keen to see adopted.

Feature on disputes within the European Commission on a proposed Directive on information society copyright.