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Following long battles, the proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market was discussed and approved by the European Parliament at the end of March.

Among the most criticized are Article 11 (Article 15 of the adopted directive, on the so-called link tax) and Article 13 (Article 17 of the adopted directive, on the so-called upload filters). These articles will in principle affect all information society service providers, from the biggest players like Google or Facebook to small local providers of services such as data storage and discussion forums. Most criticized of all, Article 13 requires Member States to ensure that information society service providers make best efforts to ensure the unavailability of works unlawfully uploaded to the operators’ platforms. This obligation and its wording is criticized especially for being too general, which could be interpreted as an obligation to introduce the so-called upload filters.

Equally unpopular, however, is the limitation of the so-called data mining, i.e. the technology used for analysing vast amounts of digitally stored information. Data mining is newly to be allowed solely for the purposes of scientific research, which can have a critical impact on the competitiveness of certain European start-ups, non-EU start-ups being subject to no such restrictions.

The Directive is not yet binding on individual providers but for Member States, which will now have two years to implement the Directive in their national legislations.