Axel Voss, German member of the European Parlament (MEP) and member of the ruling conservative party CDU, has attacked Youtube in a far reaching way. Voss, who is the proponent of a controversial EU-recommendation that will force YouTube to filter copyright infringing content from the network, said in an interview with the German sate-owned Deutsche Welle about YouTube: " They have created a business model with the property of other people – on copyright protected works. If the intention of the platform is to give people access to copyright protected works then we have to think about whether this kind of business should exist."
Deutsche Welle is under the direct supervision of the German government,
Voss wants YouTube and other aggregators to implement filters: "We all have legal obligations to fulfill. If you have a massive platform like YouTube you will have to use a technological solution. Everyone has these obligations. The new legislation is improving the situation for the European creators industry."
It is the first time that a high ranking European politician has questioned the legal legitimacy of YouTube in such a far reaching way.
The European Parliament is about to pass a new recommendation which under it's article 13 will force certain websites to filter content for which no explicit authorization to republish has been given by the content's creators.
Julia Reda, the German Pirate Party MEP who has dedicated her entire legislative period to reforming this legislation, told Deutsche Welle that the legislation if passed will have far reaching consequences: “The overall effect of the proposal is that the internet would become more like television, as a smaller number of people and platforms would be able to create and share."
UN human rights expert David Kaye has urged the European Union to bring its Copyright Directive into line with international standards on freedom of expression.
“Europe has a responsibility to modernise its copyright law to address the challenges of the digital age,” said the UN’s Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression ahead of a critical vote on the Directive. “But this should not be done at the expense of the freedom of expression that Europeans enjoy today.”
“Article 13 of the proposed Directive appears destined to drive internet platforms toward monitoring and restriction of user-generated content even at the point of upload. Such sweeping pressure for pre-publication filtering is neither a necessary nor proportionate response to copyright infringement online.”
The latest version of the proposed Directive, which would include an exemption for relatively new content-sharing providers that have limited penetration in European markets, would not meet the concerns raised by earlier drafts, Kaye added.
“Most platforms would not qualify for the exemption and would face legal pressure to install and maintain expensive content filtering infrastructure to comply with the proposed Directive,” the expert said. “In the long run, this would imperil the future of information diversity and media pluralism in Europe, since only the biggest players will be able to afford these technologies.”
In the absence of specific requirements on platforms and Member States to defend freedom of expression, it is far from clear how either will comply with the Directive’s proposed safeguards, such as the requirement that “quotation, criticism, review” and the “use [of copyrighted works] for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche” be protected, the Special Rapporteur said.
“Even the most experienced lawyers struggle to distinguish violations of copyright rules from exceptions to these rules, which vary across Member States,” Kaye added. “The lack of clear and precise language in the Directive would create even more legal uncertainty.”
“Misplaced confidence in filtering technologies to make nuanced distinctions between copyright violations and legitimate uses of protected material would escalate the risk of error and censorship. Who would bear the brunt of this practice? Typically it would be creators and artists, who lack the resources to litigate such claims.”
The European Parliament should work to resolve these issues in collaboration with digital rights groups, artists, journalists and other representatives of civil society before bringing a vote on the Directive, Kaye added.
The European Parliament is scheduled to vote on the proposed Directive in the last week of March.