- New eco Position Paper warns against barriers to investment and innovation
- Ancillary copyright economically and legally unwarranted
- Legal uncertainty through inexact wording of the law
VG Media began a legal process last week against Google to enforce the obligation to pay arising from ancillary copyright for publishers. eco – Association of the German Internet Industry e. V. has in the past repeatedly campaigned against the introduction of ancillary copyright for publishers, and again calls for the abolishment of this regulation, which is a barrier to investment and innovation. In the view of eco, the disadvantages of ancillary copyright clearly outweigh the advantages. In a Position Paper published today, eco presents the multi-faceted disadvantages, and calls for the German Federal Government to re-evaluate and abolish the ancillary copyright law.
Ancillary copyright economically and legally unwarranted
“In our opinion, the ancillary copyright law for publishers can not be reconciled with the German constitution or with European law. There are serious constitutional concerns, which we pointed out during the legislative procedure, and at the same time there is no economic or legal justification for such an ancillary copyright law,” explains Oliver Süme, eco Director of Policy and Law. “We therefore call for the Federal Government to adhere to their intention, presaged in the Coalition Contract, to re-evaluate ancillary copyright law and ultimately to abolish it,” said Süme. Ancillary copyright not only endangers the freedom of information for Internet users, but also the freedom of the media and the freedom of economic activity for the affected information services, and has become a barrier to media diversity and the formation of public opinion. This would in the end also become a burden for publishers.
Legal uncertainty through inexact wording of the law
eco also finds fault with the formulation of the legal text, which has resulted in the current legal uncertainty. For example, which providers count as the producers of “press material”, and can therefore make claims based on ancillary copyright, is not clearly defined. Also the term “for commercial purposes” requires further legal clarification, as does the formulation “individual words or minimal excerpts of text,” which are supposed to be excluded from the scope of ancillary copyright. It is to be expected that the ancillary copyright law will result in long drawn-out processes in order to achieve a unified interpretation of a range of terminology. Thus, instead of legal certainty being created for the publishers, there now looms a long phase of legal uncertainty – for publishers and for Internet companies.