Guesses outnumber facts
The Council of the European Union passed the directive despite Estonia’s decision yesterday. Six member states voted against the directive: Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland and Sweden. Estonia, Belgium and Slovenia remained undecided. The remaining 19 member states supported the directive.
At the same time, no one in Estonia or Europe seems to know what the digital single market copyright directive heralds for our websites, composers-artists-writers and the people enjoying their creations. The greatest opponents of the directive are US giants Google and Wikipedia and European Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda. Estonian organizations that share their concerns are Wikimedia Estonia, the Estonian Internet Community and web portal hinnavaatlus.ee.
The Americans have said that it is likely multimedia portals like YouTube will have to start restricting content Europeans can access if tougher copyright regulation will make it impossible to offer certain videos in the region.
Estonian activists said before the European Parliament vote that the directive would force all portals offering access to user content to adopt censorship bots to analyze content and ban everything that might infringe on copyright.
European Commissioner for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip said that copyright filters are nothing new for websites and that YouTube has been using them for a long time. What will change are users’ rights regarding potential violations.
“If you upload something such a filter unjustly removes, then today, you have no legal mechanism with which to ensure it is put up again. The new directive will introduce that mechanism,” Ansip said.
The commissioner added that 95 percent of music uploaded to YouTube is licensed already. “Sites having to grapple with licenses is nothing new,” he said. That is why Ansip believes it unlikely YouTube will offer Europeans reduced content.