Leading copyright researcher’s assessment of article 13 advises against adoption

 

29 June 2018

Christina Angelopoulos, a leading copyright academic, has provided an assessment of the proposed provisions of article 13 (available here via Kluwer Copyright Blog). Angelopoulos finds that the current provisions of article 13 are incompatible with the eCommerce Directive (particularly article 15, prohibition against general monitoring obligations), as well as with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (particularly in relation to article 8, protection of personal data, and article 11, on freedom of expression and information). Furthermore, they note that any proposed “safeguards” to ensure proportionality are likely to fail, as the requirement to implement a filtering system is fundamentally incapable of allowing for a “fair balance” assessment. They conclude that this outcome is avoidable, but only if the European Parliament vote against the proposed reforms at the plenary vote of 5 July.