Today and tomorrow, 26 and 27 of September, a delegation of the Innovative Media Publishers is in Brussels to meet with representatives from the Commission, the Council and Members of the European Parliament to present their reservations against the introduction of a neighboring right as designed in art. 11 of the Copyright Directive and deliver an open letter calling for its rejection.
Join us by sharing this letter with relevant policy makers and express your concerns regarding the proposal!
RE: Open letter to Members of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union on the introduction of a new neighboring right under art. 11 of the Copyright Directive
Dear Ministers,
Dear Axel Voss MEP,
Dear Members of the European Parliament,
We are writing to you as the Coalition of Innovative Media Publishers, comprising AEEPP (ES), ANSO (IT), SPIIL (FR), 300polityka (PL), Echo24.cz (CZ), Golem.de (DE) and Meltygroup (FR). We represent associations of small and medium sized publishers, media companies and digital native outlets, committed to producing high quality news and relying on online channels to reach and grow our audiences. On a daily basis, we provide more than 1.37 million stories to 140 million readers.
We support the creation of a regulatory environment that fosters a diverse, pluralistic, competitive and innovative media publishing sector, that contributes to the EU’s digital leadership globally and actively defends EU citizens’ freedoms. However, we feel that the Commission’s proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market does not achieve these goals and we wish to communicate our strong reservations for the proposed neighbouring right as enshrined in Article 11 of the Directive.
A neighbouring right would have an adverse effect on the business models of online publishers: in Spain and Germany, where similar rights have been introduced, news publishers experience increasing challenges in reaching their audiences online. The Commission proposal fails to take into consideration market realities and the fact that digital publishers and online media outlets rely heavily on a broad variety of online channels to reach their readers and generate revenue.
Moreover, Article 11 will also have serious negative effects on the quality of the press, freedom of opinion and freedom of expression of EU citizens. A new publisher right makes it harder for small and medium sized publishers to reach their audience and raises barrier to entry. In Spain and Germany, small and medium sized news publishers suffered more from the introduction of the right than large and established publishers.
For the reasons of (1) dismantling digital business models and (2) stifling media pluralism, we discourage you from creating a new neighbouring right in Article 11. We encourage you to work on a compromise that fairly balances the interests of all publishers of press publications. We believe that some of the alternative options tabled by the Presidency and certain MEPs through granting effective protection to publishers, are balanced, effective and workable.
We call on you, policy-makers involved in the debate, to reject the Commission’s proposal to introduce new rights for press publishers, and to reject the adoption of Art 11. Should the outright rejection of article 11 not be feasible, we believe that alternatives tabled by the Presidency and certain MEPs, may form the basis for a more constructive discussion.
Yours sincerely,
The European Innovation Media Publishers
Find our open letter here