As EU member states now begin to support the directive through passage of national legislation, opportunities, challenges, and unintended consequences are emerging.
Interview with Roy Kaufman
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Email | Download
Approved by the European Parliament in March, the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market aims to promote a well-functioning marketplace for the exploitation of works in a wide range of media, from newspapers and books to music and film.
On Wednesday, October 16th, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Copyright Clearance Center presents the EU Digital Single Market Copyright Directive: Licensing in the Digital Age. CCC’s Chris Kenneally will moderate a panel of specialists in law and publishing. Ahead of the program, Roy Kaufman, CCC’s managing director of business development and government relations, shares with Kenneally his thoughts on a program preview.
As Kaufman notes, the last update to EU copyright legislation came in 2001 – a generation ago in Internet time.
“In 2001, copyright was the domain of policy wonks and people in copyright industries — much more so than it is today. Now, you’ve got Google and platforms (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) that are quite significant,” he says.
“We’ve had changes in the newspaper publishing business, generally to the negative. We’ve seen huge changes in music publishing. We went from the days of recorded music bought on recorded media, to the days where that got destroyed by unlicensed peer-to-peer and other types of infringing use, to music now making a comeback through streaming and high-quality audio sites,” Kaufman explains. “A lot of things have changed. And everything’s become a lot more politicized.”
