BERLIN — Germanys copyright reform critics are determined to keep battling until the last minute.
Over the weekend, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of German cities to protest a controversial overhaul of EU copyright rules that is due for a final vote in the European Parliament on Tuesday.
After more than two and a half years of fierce lobbying, critics led by Green MEP Julia Reda are now pushing to change a draft law as it goes to vote before Parliaments plenary session.
With much of the bill already locked down, opponents hope to succeed by stripping the text of a section known as Article 13, which governs the commercial relationship between the creative industry and platforms like Googles YouTube.
In the final hours before the midday vote, anti-Article 13 and pro-Article 13 campaigners will continue their fight online as critics flood social media to try to persuade European lawmakers to ditch a section that opponents say will change the face of the internet, and which backers argue will help to bolster the earnings of content creators and producers.
“The protests are a clear signal from young Europeans that they dont agree with this reform” — MEP Tiemo Wölken
The last-minute battle underscores how sensitive the copyright reform has become in Germany, where a history of authoritarian governments has made the population sensitive to any hint of “online censorship,” and where even Chancellor Angela Merkels governing coalition is split over the reform.
“The protests are a clear signal from young Europeans that they dont agree with this reform,” said Tiemo Wölken, a member of the European Parliament for Merkels junior coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party (SPD). “Thats why I hope that many colleagues [in the European Parliament] will finally take the protests seriously and that they wont ignore such concerns, particularly those of young Europeans.”
Wölken hopes other lawmakers will follow what amounts to an ultimatum: Scrub the text of Article 13 or see the reform, which is the result of thousands of hours of negotiations, rejected in its entirety.
A question of content
The problem for Wölken is that Germanys political class is far from united on Article 13. The passage has the backing of many officials in Merkels conservative Christian Democratic Union, including the reforms rapporteur Axel Voss and the leader of the European Peoples Party in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber. (Weber, a member of the CDUs sister party, the Christian Social Union, is running to become the next head of the European Commission.)
Julia Reda from the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance who has been pushing to change the draft law | European Parliament
In Strasbourg, where a final vote on the reform is scheduled to take place around midday Tuesday, both the European Peoples Party, to which the CDU belongs, and the Socialists and Democrats group, to which the SPD belongs, told their members to vote in favor of the reform.
But while the CDU delegation plans to do so, the SPD members of the European Parliament have warned they will follow Wölkens lead and reject the reform unless Article 13 disappears. More than 120 lawmakers, including SPD members, have put forward amendments to delete Article 13 from the text.
Article 13 makes it mandatory for companies like YouTube to negotiate licensing agreements with rights-holders to publish their content. It also requires platforms to make sure copyright-infringing content doesnt appear online, which has ignited a fiery debate in Europes largest economy. (Axel Springer, POLITICO Europes co-owner, is an active participant in the overall copyright reform debate.)
Supporters, backed by Germanys influential publishers, say the clause is necessary to protect the rights of creative workers.
“The online platforms have spent a lot of money to lobby against our proposal” — European Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger
Opponents argue that it will lead to platforms scanning material by using content recognition technology that critics call “upload filters.”
The fear is that such technology could also lead to the removal of some lawful content, raising concerns in a country scarred by the experience of two surveillance states in the 20th century — the Nazi and East German communist regimes.
Opponents also argue that Merkel should nix Article 13 because they say her coalition agreement rules out the introduction of such content recognition technologies.
However, supporters fire back by arguing that this would play into the hands of U.S. tech giants including Google or Facebook, which have objected to content recognition technologies along similar lines. (Google and Facebook both already use such automated tools.)
“The online platforms have spent a lot of money to lobby against our proposal,” European Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger, a CDU member who put the copyright reform forward when he was digital commissioner,
