Tomorrow (26th March 2019) MEPs will vote on a controversial EU directive to copyright work used on the web. It sets terms and conditions for others to reuse content (posted by people like us) commercially.
The battle has been between the tech giants, whose business model is all about reusing other’s intellectual property without license or renumeration, and us ‘the creative community’.
Scares have included that ‘readers will be unable to share links’ (wrong) or ‘Wikipedia will collapse’ (nonsense). Many of us have had content stolen by others to market their photographic services from our clients’ own media sites, and now Publishers’ Right (Article II) in the directive will allow us to chase our payment, which should stop many thefts. It should allow a revenue stream that before was tricky to say the least.
As Angela Mills Wade, the director of the European Publishers Council is quoted, “a vote for the directive will be a vote for fairness, for culture, for creativity, and crucially, for the future of Europe’s professional, diverse independent press.”