The EU Commission is working on a new and updated legal framework for copyright. A draft has been leaked — and it raises some serious questions about what the EC is up to.
Most notably it covers “ancillary copyright”, a term used when it comes to Internet linking in relation to copyright.
From the beginning, this was about German and Spanish newspapers wanting Google to pay for linking to their material. This idea went down in flames, as Google stopped linking — and the publishers had to beg them to start linking again.
Now it seems that the EC is taking a new and broader approach to this issue.
The fear is that unless you have explicit permission to do so in every single case, linking to copyright-protected material (articles, pictures, video, sound) will become illegal.
This would be a fatal blow to the entire concept of a world wide web. Linking is the very neuronic system of the Internet. Having to ask for permission or seek among different sorts of licenses before you link could be extremely time-consuming and bureaucratic. People would rather refrain from linking all together.
One (of many) unintended consequences would be hampering the open, democratic debate online.
And old style media wouldn’t gain anything from it. Opposite, they would lose readers and clicks. (Like experience from Germany and Spain clearly demonstrate.)
The reasonable standpoint is that if you put something on the Internet, others should be allowed to link to it.
But that might not be the way the EC sees it.
/ HAX
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