Mixed reactions on the Commission’s Copyright guidance

Broadcasters, producers, CMOs, platforms are not very enthusiastic about the Commission’s guidance on Article 17 of the Copyright Directive, far from it. They point out that the Commission goes far beyond the text of Article 17, introduces new obscure concepts, and does not provide elements to define basic notions. A representative of Google France notes that the Commission has stated in its press release that the guidance will benefit creators, whilst not mentioning them once in its text ! The deadline for transposing the 2019 Copyright Directive into the laws of EU member states was yesterday, June 7, 2021. Only five countries – France, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary and more recently Denmark – have transposed the text. None of these national transpositions correspond to the guidance on article 17 published at the last minute by the EU Commission, on Friday June 4, by the European Commission. That could be seen as a problem, since the main purposes of this guidance were to support Member States in their transposition of the text, and to help stakeholders – authors, rightsholders, platforms, users – in their future application of the text. However,…