Copyright: journalists and creators get right to fair pay

Do you like being paid for your job? Do you enjoy rights to your property that prevent others from misusing it? Journalists and people working in the creative industry do too. And that is what the Copyright Directive, just adopted, is all about: using the same property rules offline and online.

Axel Voss MEP, the Spokesman on the new EU copyright rules, said: “We have agreed a new set of rules which will do exactly the opposite of killing the internet. Unfair remuneration for journalists and creators means there are less people willing to do the job, which ultimately means less quality content on the internet.”

The Copyright Directive was adopted after three years of exhaustive talks. “Despite expensive campaigns by the big tech players, the new rules represent a broad agreement on the need for a functioning mechanism of property protection in the digital age”, explained Axel Voss.

The rules apply the same property rules we are familiar with in daily life for the internet while protecting users: “We are not changing the rules of the game, we are just making the current ones enforceable. What was legal to post before the Directive will remain legal to post after the Directive. If it is uploaded illegally, licence-holders will be given a voice to change it. These simple rules will also mean better protection for internet users. Copyright agreements concluded between platforms and right-holders will exclude users from being liable for copyright infringements”, concluded Voss.