Before 2019, legal insecurity remained for authors who pointed out the fact that the value of their copyright-protected works was unduly recovered by online platforms such as YouTube. Moreover, user was the only responsible for putting online counterfeit work. The platforms were protected by their hosting statutes which allowed them to never be held responsible.

 

The directive on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market of April 17, 2019 (2019/790) has reformed these statutes. The purpose of this directive is to modernize some aspects of the European Union legal framework in order to adapt copyright law to new technologies and news ways to distribute protected work. Articles 15 and 17 have been debated at length. The authors’ representants were opposed to GAFA (Google Amazon Facebook Apple) which fought against this reform.

 

In essence, article 15 of this directive establishes a right to remuneration for press publishers when a press publication is used online by information society service providers such as Google News.

 

Concerning article 17, it provides a new sharing of value between the online platforms and the authors. It creates a system of license agreement allowing authors or rightsholders to receive appropriate and proportional remuneration for the exploitation of their copyright-protected work on the Internet. From now on, large content sharing platforms are responsible for what they share. However, some platforms are not held responsible depending on their annual turnover, the average number of monthly unique visitors or their creation date. This exception is implemented to promote start up.

 

In conclusion, the directive on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market provides a new legal framework, adapted to news technologies, in order to fight efficiently against counterfeiting.