<
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/09/30/the-copyright-directives-link-tax-has-been-a-failure-will-anyone-learn-from-this/>
"It seems so long ago that people were trying to stop the worst aspects of the
EU Copyright Directive. It was quite a battle, as Chapter 6 of
Walled Culture
the book (free digital versions available) recounts in detail. The final
legislation was passed in March 2019, but it is important not simply to accept
what happened and move on. The copyright industry used many dubious arguments
to convince MEPs to vote for the new copyright framework. Although many of us
pointed out the flaws in these at the time, we were drowned out by the chorus
of well-paid lobbyists employed by the copyright world. Now that the EU
Copyright Directive has been in force for a few years, we can begin to see its
real-world effects. That allows us to compare them with the claims that were
made to get the law passed.
For example, the so-called “link tax” was supposedly about saving the newspaper
industry. Many publishers say they are struggling, which is true, but not for
the reasons they claim. It is largely their own failure to embrace the
opportunities of the Internet in the 1990s that led to newcomers like Google
becoming hugely successful in the online news space. Nonetheless, publishers
argued that a new ancillary copyright should be created to allow them to
generate revenue that was desperately needed if the world of newspapers was to
thrive in the EU.
In fact, as I wrote in an article six years ago, for the link tax we did have
some data points. Both Germany and Spain had introduced a link tax before the
EU Copyright Directive, and the resulting income from them was pitiful –
certainly nowhere near enough to “save” the newspaper industry. This showed the
link tax was more about publishers asserting their right to demand a payment
from the Internet giants, as part of their larger claim that any use of
copyright material must be controlled by them."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
