On September 12, the European Parliament voted to approve the revised Copyright Directive, which is intended to harmonise aspects of EU copyright law.
There is still one more vote in January and if the Directive passes then it will be up to each individual EU member country to decide on how to put it into practice.
Commenting on the ruling, Nick McDonald, partner and IP solicitor, says:
These new rules are not surprising, given the amount of copyright infringement on the internet, and they will potentially have a huge impact upon the way in which we share and access information. The reality is that our daily use and consumption of information online has become not only rife with, but in many ways reliant upon, the use of content that uses others’ intellectual property rights."As things stand, the real question is how realistic it is to expect technology platforms and social media providers to put in place filters that sift out ‘bad content’ but still allow the flow of legitimate content. It would seem likely that such filtering will make this difficult."
The comment has been picked up by World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR) which can be read here.
