MEPs to vote on controversial copyright law again next week

Fierce lobbying sets artists and publishers against free speech activists and the tech industry, with the vote too close to call

Members of the European Parliament are due to vote once again on September 12th on a series of controversial copyright reforms.

In July, MEPs voted against a plan to fast-track EU-wide copyright laws that would effectively have mandated filters on all uploaded content - two weeks after an EU committee voted 14 to nine to pass them. On that occasion, the MEPs voted by 318 to 278 to send the draft directive back to the drawing board over Articles 11 and 13. There were 31 abstentions

Article 11 would have created a new rule that would have severely restricted the right to quote or even link to other articles online without paying for the privilege.

Article 13, meanwhile, would have required all online content providers to rigorously police their platforms and to proactively take down any copyrighted material under pain of stiff fines.

These two articles will be amended in a renewed attempt to get the legislation on the books. Indeed, draft versions have been circulating among MEPs.

There has been fierce lobbying on both sides of the debate. UK Music a campaigning and lobbying group which represents the UK recorded and live music industry claims that the technology giants are responsible for reducing artists' income by distributing music without paying royalties.

"It is a huge moment for the future of the British music industry," CEO Michael Dugher told Music Week. "This is actually all about decency and standing up to a bully, which is what Google is - a massive corporate bully."

Dugher continued: "YouTube make billions of pounds out of the music content on their platform. I'm very angry about it, so are lots of other people. It's time that they paid their fair share to the people that create the content that's made them billions."

Filmmakers have also backed the measures. Sir Alan Parker, Paolo Sorrentino, Margarethe von Trotta and Mike Leigh are among those who recently signed a declaration of support.

"We, audiovisual authors, absolutely need this Directive to be adopted on time to ensure freedom of expression and independence of creators as well as authors' rights. The principle of fair and proportionate remuneration, improved measures on the transparency of the exploitation and contract adjustment mechanism will make a big difference," The declaration states.

News publishers are also broadly supportive of measures that would potentially force companies such as Google and Facebook to more thoroughly police copyright online and possibly pay for links and content.

However, similar measures failed in Germany and Spain as traffic to news sites dropped when 'link taxes' were levied on the likes of Google News and Twitter.

The measures are opposed by the technology sector, unsurprisingly, and also by publishers of blogs and freely available content. María Sefidari, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, is concerned about the possible effect on information in the public domain.

"Changes to the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market could have serious implications for Wikipedia and other independent and nonprofit websites like it," she wrote.

"We urge EU representatives to support reform that adds critical protections for public domain works of art, history, and culture, and to limit new exclusive rights to existing works that are already free of copyright."

Privacy and free speech advocates are also concerned about the unintended consequences of any measure designed to enforce copyright compliance.

"Open Rights Group opposes Article 13 - or any new amendments proposing similar ideas - because it poses a real threat to the fundamental right to free speech online," wrote that organisations' campaigns manager, Mike Morel in a blog post.

Morel is particularly concerned with the mooted proposal to require upload filters, software that automatically checks material for copyrighted content as it is uploaded to the web.

"The proposals within Article 13 would change the way that the Internet works, from free and creative sharing to one where anything can be removed without warning, by computers. This is far too high a price to pay for copyright enforcement. We need a copyright reform which does not sacrifice fundamental human and digital rights," he said.

With the vote so tight and with lobbying from both sides so concerted, the final vote on this issue is very hard to call.