EU Copyright Proposals Expected to Help Music Industry Fight Piracy
As part of the copyright protections, the EU also is expected to propose granting news organizations new rights to demand licenses for the posting of even snippets of their articles for 20 years, a move to help publishers negotiate compensation from news aggregators such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
The European Commission’s proposals, which come after a three-year review aimed at updating copyright law for the digital age, could take years to ratify. The proposals have been—and are likely to remain—the subject of heavy lobbying from copyright holders like record labels and newspaper publishers on one hand, and technology firms on the other.
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Music executives say the reforms are a step in the right direction. Music executives have lauded the fact that early drafts of the proposal acknowledged the widening “value gap” between the amount of music consumption and the amount of revenue it generates.
Over the past few years, sites offering protected content uploaded by fans “have flourished and have become main sources of access to content online,” reads a recent draft of the proposals, adding that this affects creators’ ability “to get an appropriate remuneration for it.”
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