Article 13 Moves Forward As France, Germany Sign On

Article 13 is moving forward to full adoption after France and Germany signed on to a revised version. The on again off again controversial EU copyright directive legislation is set up-end the Safe Harbor protections on which YouTube and other popular user-generated platforms were created.

Google, YouTube and others have aggressively opposed Article 13 whole the major labels and most of the music industry have supported it.

The new version excludes some newer and smaller internet companies from the tough new rules.

The deal, first made available via Politico UK, excludes companies if they fit three criteria:

• the service is publicly available for less than three years
• has fewer than 5 million monthly unique visitors
• an annual turnover of less than €10 million/$11.4M USD

These smaller sites must still obtain licenses from rights holders, but will not be forced to use upload filters to prevent infringing content from being re-uploaded.

Other sites must now add upload filters, including many that just allow comments. Here are some diverse examples via EU analyst Julia Redda:

• Discussion boards on commercial sites, such as the Ars Technica or Heise.deforums (older than 3 years)
• Patreon, a platform with the sole purpose of helping authors get paid (fails to meet any of the three criteria)
• Niche social networks like GetReeled, a platform for anglers (well below 5 million users, but older than 3 years)
• Small European competitors to larger US brands like Wykop, a Polish news sharing platform similar to Reddit (well below €10 million turnover, but may reach 5 million visitors and is older than 3 years)

Read the full new deal here (pdf).