In case you missed it (which you haven’t because you read all our blogs), last month the European Parliament’s Policy Department published a study commissioned by the Legal Affairs (JURI) Committee, on the implications of Article 11 of the Copyright Directive.
The study concluded that many of the problems that press publishers are facing can be solved by a less controversial solution! In particular, the authors call to abandon of the press publishers’ right in favour of a presumption that press publishers are entitled to copyright/use rights in the contents of their publications.
Have you ever thought how publishers and journalists feel about this proposed new right? We have gone through the 42 pages of the study and compiled 11 quotes that reflect how publishers and journalists perceive this right.
Oh, and by the way, you will probably be wondering why nearly all the quotes of the study were left unsigned?! Unfortunately this is the reflection of the immense lobby efforts being carried out by traditional publishers’. The amount of pressure has been such, that smaller online publishers that wish to speak up against them, are forced to stay on the low to avoid a backlash. Talking about free speech…
The principle of the ancillary right is non-sensical. The architecture of the Internet assumes that links indicate what is behind a link.Deputy editor-in-chief of a German publisher
Paying for links is as absurd as paying for citations in the academic world would be.Editor-in-chief
We see no need for the proposed right. It does not seem to be evidence-based and press publishers in the UK are already protected adequately by copyright and database right.UK’s Society of Authors
The Spanish law has created ‘considerable collateral damage to all sectors’, and fears the same would be true of an EU wide right.Christophe Dickes - Kantar Media
Within the publishing houses, the debate is conducted quite differently. While in our outlet, we can freely voice that we consider the ancillary copyright nonsense and that it goes against the nature of the Internet. In other publishing houses, it was said that there was some pressure to paint a more positive picture of the ancillary copyright. Overall, it seems that it would have been more sensible to have put the money that was invested in the VG Media into in-house innovation projectsGerman publisher
[The Spanish law] negatively impacted Spanish media because as they disappeared from Google, their online presence and visitors also decreased. Consequently, Spanish media realized that the law was a mistake and began negotiations with Google.Major Spanish publisher
Since 2014, the users of our service decided to boycot the press publishers that promoted the law on intellectual property of press publishers. Therefore, the main newspapers in Spain are not linked in our service because users are boycotting them. Nevertheless, we are asked to pay a licence which will compensate those newspapers. This is non-sense because we are not linking them. The newspapers linked by us, such as El Diario or El Español, did not promote this law. This is paradoxical because part of the licence that we have to pay will end up in the bank account of newspapers that are not aggregated by us.CEO of a Spanish aggregator
The Spanish law on intellectual property for press publishers has not changed the situation for journalists at all. In my opinion, the challenges that digital press is facing should be regulated by the market itself rather than by legislators. The problem of laws is that they will always be behind the development of society. Laws are, of course, necessary. For example, laws should protect the universal right of communication and access to information. Instead, protective laws for press publishers might not be necessary.Director of Communication from a major Spanish publisher
Everybody thinks the ancillary right is targeted at Google, but all newspapers are using news from other media that might fall under the right. If we take the ancillary right seriously, news publishers themselves who rely heavily on content produced by others (such as focus.de) will be affected.German publication
The activity of any press publisher, both small and major publishers, will not be influenced by such small contributions. I prefer receiving Internet traffic from aggregators and social media, rather than receiving that compensation. Moreover, from a purely quantitative perspective, if the money collected through licenses is divided among all Spanish media, each will receive a very small amount. The Spanish law will destroy the news ecosystem: The most important aggregators or social media will try to reach individual agreements with major newspapers. This leaves aside smaller players, such as small aggregators who cannot offer individual agreements, as well as small news publishers who are not interesting for big aggregators.CEO of a Spanish aggregator
To sum up, [the traditional newspapers] wanted to make us think that aggregators and newspapers are confronted because of copyright issues, while in fact it is us who decide on the copyright of our content and what we want to share. We only need to make sure that we are properly referenced and that there is a link pointing to our content.Spanish online publication specialising in economic and financial news