UK will not adopt EU copyright directive with upload filter after Brexit
The UK government, through Chris Skidmore, the minister for science and universities, has said it will not implement the adopted EU copyright directive after the kingdom leaves the EU at the end of this month.
In a written reply, Chris Skidmore writes that the deadline for the implementation of the Copyright Directive is June 7, 2021 and that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union on January 31. The so-called implementation period, a period during which security is provided by temporarily applying EU law in the UK, will end on December 31, 2020. Skidmore says the government has decided not to extend this period and is therefore not mandatory. to implement the Copyright Directive. The British government has no plans to do so, he said. The United Kingdom previously supported the directive during the last vote of the European Council, which took place in April last year.
The Copyright Directive has already been passed by the European Parliament. There has been quite a bit of criticism of the new copyright rules, which mainly focuses on two articles. The former Article 13 of the EU Copyright Directive, eventually renamed Article 17, means that platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Pinterest are liable for any copyright infringements of rightholders, in the event that users upload protected material on these platforms without permission. The expectation is that these platforms will have little choice but to set upload filters, which according to many are not yet good enough and will block too much.
In addition, the criticism focuses on Article 15, which gives news publishers an extra right on top of the existing copyright to protect press publications on the internet. Pursuant to this article, third parties may not use press publications or parts thereof until they have obtained a license to do so. Hyperlinks, single words, very short excerpts and private, non-commercial use of press publications by individuals are excluded. The rest will have to be paid for, among other things, snippets of news publications, something that critics say will put pressure on freedom of expression and access to information. The scheme is intended, for example, to make Google pay more for its Google News service, although it will also make it difficult for smaller, competing services.