Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related Rights in the Digital Single Market History, interpretations and implementation in the digital era

Abstract

Over the last decade a flow of information has been created since computing world has invaded our daily lifestyle, a world, where is very simple and fast, to access thanks to increasingly marked use of digital platforms. The speed in the exchange of information penalized the original authors and developed the growth of digital platforms, which exploiting the content and potential of the authors, leveraged the lack of rules and IT discipline. In the early 2000s, with Directive 2000/31 /EC and subsequently with 2001/29 / EC, the European Commission began to give rules also to the electronic market. The members of the European Commission, having realized the growing impact of digital and internet technologies, they have decided to commit to renew the single European market, making it suitable for the digital age, introducing the concept of " Single digital Market ". This thesis will explain the evolution of a common European regulation for copyright in the digital single market, from the formulated proposal to the official directive. The tool of the "Single digital Market" be standardized in compliance with copyright in the current scenario, but for this purpose an update of 2001/29 / EC was required, and finally it was proposed, following various consultations, by members of the European Commission in a concrete way in September 2016. The points of main interest and we will focus later are articles 11 and 13, which will subsequently become articles 15 and 17 in the final text of the directive 2019/790 - The New Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive - approved officially on May 17th , 2019 in the official Journal of the European Union. The two articles protect the creators of the contents that are republished on the network, or the holders of copyright, in particular article 11 establishes that the re-sharing of such information, on platforms such as Social Networks or other types, drawn from newspaper articles, for example, require authorization, free of charge or for a fee, from the creators of the content. Article 13, on the other hand, manages the insertion of copyrighted texts by users on online sharing platforms, essentially everything we find uploaded on a social media or digital platform must first be regulated by adeguate pre-established contracts, integrated by automatic algorithms for preventive control of the enormous amount of information that is uploaded to the web every day; We will start in Chapter 1, discussing about the history of copyright directive and how this concept has evolved over time, adapting to the rapid changes in the IT world, leading to the proposal made by the European Commission to give real copyright regulation in the Single Digital Market; we will describe the various steps and controversies that led to its final approval in 2019. In chapter 2 we will talk extensively about article 11 of the proposal (article 15 in the final text), entering into the merits of the reasons that led the European Commission to want to strongly protect copyright holders. One of the main aspects that we will discuss regarding the critical context of editors, indeed the sector was in crisis. The directive protects the disclosure of journalistic works, leading to major discussions and disputes by large digital platforms such as Google, which initially did not comply with the new agreement; we will see what impact it has had in Europe. In chapter 3 we will analyse the other article, that is one of the main of the directive, and consequently we will discuss about the access to debate that it has resulted, article 13 (article 17 in the final text); we will talk in more detail about how the rules imposed by the legislation work and apply to the digital world. In chapter 4 we will discuss about the implementation of both articles in the Eu context.