Leaked Impact Assessment on the copyright reform recommends an ancillary copyright on steroids! | IGEL -

"Yesterday, Statewatch leaked a draft version of the Impact Assessment (IA) report for the upcoming copyright reform. Concerning the area of publisher’s rights it leaves a devastating impression. The authors of the IA suggest introducing a new ancillary/neighbouring right for news publishers with a broad scope. And they make it sound like this would be an obvious and particularly good choice....

Informed readers will notice very quickly that the IA sounds in most parts like it was copied from lobbying papers of the publisher’s associations. The broad and highly elaborated expert’s criticism in the German and Spanish debate is totally ignored. Same is obviously true for potentially thousands of critical statements that were filed at the Commission’s own “public consultation”. ...

That the new right “would not change the legal status of hyperlinks in EU law” (see p. 147) is nothing but a lip service. Even if turned out that setting a mere hyperlink without description is not covered, any kind of described link (i.e. useful link) that includes a small excerpt of the linked source would be made subject to a license. This would mean the end of the Internet, as we know it...."