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Without the due explanations of the Minister of Culture, on a trip to Dubai, and wrapped in a royal decree that transposes up to eight European directives, Miquel Iceta has chosen to remove the Google in the adaptation of European regulations on copyright to Spanish legislation.
In this way, the fear that the cultural sector had been manifesting over recent weeks becomes a reality: in his opinion, and this was warned by the Continue Creating in Digital platform last Thursday, the new law that will regulate the digital single market involves installing “The law of the jungle on the web”.
She has been the Minister spokesperson for the Government, Isabel rodriguez, who, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers, has announced the approval of a royal decree that has arrived five months late, as it should have been ready before June 7, which is why Brussels expedited Brussels .
With the transposition of the European directive, which is approved by royal decree in a package containing eight directives, the Government intends to “adapt copyright to the digital environment, taking into account the behavior of users and correcting some imbalances that have caused in the markets some damages for copyright holders ”.
And to resolve these “imbalances”, at the most conflictive point of the transposition, the Government has opted for eliminate mandatory collective management, essential in the copyright management model in force to date, as this clause allowed publishers, all together, to demand that large platforms pay a fee for the use of their content.
Behind this demand is the decision that Google made in 2014 to close its news aggregator Google News, which has always refused to pay for this concept. Faced with the obligation to pay the media a stipulated and transparent rate for the use of content protected by “inalienable” copyright, the company chose to close its channel.
Later, with the launch of Discover, with functionalities similar to Google News, the company once again put the media on guard.
Now, Google and other companies such as Facebook that also add media content will be able to reach agreements with the different media in individual negotiations. The royal decree law, according to Culture, “gives the option and freedom to each publisher and rights holder to manage it, either individually, through direct negotiation with digital content aggregators, or through a collective management entity with voluntary, not compulsory character ”.
What the collective management entities warned is that, without collective bargaining and the inalienability of the right, large platforms have the possibility of paying fees to the media that have nothing to do with copyright, an economic shortcut that, In the long run, it is detrimental to the sector.
In this sense, CEDRO sources – groups together authors and publishers of books, magazines, newspapers and scores – regret the mandatory collective management “because that weakens the protection system as a whole.” Regarding the transposition of article 15 of the directive, they hope that “it will not generate the legal uncertainty that is being experienced in France.”
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism