CCIA raises Copyright Directive concerns with US government

 

7 February 2019

In comments submitted to the US Trade Representative, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (‘CCIA’, an industry organisation with members including Amazon, Google and Facebook) has written extensively on the EU’s “motivation to target primarily US firms” by deviating from global norms of intermediary liability. The comments contain concerns about the article 13 of the proposed Directive, and in particular how this would “impair US companies investments for the benefit of EU rightsholders, establishing a market access barrier for many US services and startups”. Also writing on article 11, the CCIA claims that this would be a violation of the Berne Convention (regarding freedom of quotation and “news of the day”, and “ultimately undermine the ability of free flow of information online by mandating fees for the quotation of published content”.