That’s a huge step up from the current measures that only require these services to act when notified about a copyright infringement.
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A recent draft of the EC proposals said that the past few years has seen websites offering user-uploaded content “flourish” and “become main sources of access to content online”, which affects musicians and record companies’ ability “to get an appropriate remuneration for it”.
Major online players and content aggregators such as Google are likely to offer strong resistance to the proposals.
The search engine giant said that the proposal suggests filtration of works including text, video, and images by online services.
John Higgins, director general of industry group Digital Europe, warned: “This proposal appears to be sacrificing the next generation of young, innovative European creators in order to protect the interests of legacy media and their rigid business models”.
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said: “I want journalists, publishers and authors to be paid fairly for their work, whether it is made in studios or living rooms, whether it is disseminated offline or online, whether it is published via a copying machine or hyperlinked on the web”.
It said the proposals will also bring tools for innovation to education, research and cultural heritage institutions.
In the report, UK Music chairman Andy Heath said revenues from ad-funded digital services “effectively devalue our music behind protectionist and out dated legislation”.
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Video sharing platforms will also be obliged to ramp up their automatic “content recognition technologies” (like YouTube’s Content ID) – a proviso that will both improve “notice-and-take-down” procedures and lead to more transparent reporting structures, theoretically enabling rights holders to better identify when their works are played and how often.
