EVA’s CONTRIBUTION TO ART 17 GUIDELINES
Brussels, 15 September 2020
The European Visual Artists responded to the targeted consultation of the European Commission on the guidelines concerning Article 17 of the Copyright Directive.
EVA’s network of Collective Management Organisations for visual works is very concerned that the elements proposed by the European Commission are over-interpreting some recitals of the directive, possibly leading Member States to create copyright exceptions which were not intended by the EU co-legislators, like for example potentially extending the list of platforms exempted from Article 17 liability. EVA takes the view that guidelines cannot be a way to add different legal provisions from the backdoor and without democratic process.
EVA is of the opinion that the baseline of best efforts from platforms is to sit at the table with European visual CMOs and cooperate to obtain a license for the billions of copyrighted images they give access to. Our members are willing and ready to license platforms.
Vincent van den Eijnde, EVA’s president and CEO of Pictoright (Dutch visual CMO), stated: «Visual CMOs exist to license visual authors’ works. We are willing to sit at the table with platforms and discuss the best way to license the uses they need. We will not accept that platforms or the implementation of Article 17 discriminate against visual authors: their protected works are present in the number of billions on social media be it as stand-alone works (like on Instagram, Facebook etc.) or as embedded works (like in videos on Youtube). Youtube is hoping to be exempted from liability for protected images, but visual authors have a right to be remunerated also for the use of their embedded works and we expect that the value-gap is closed in practice and not just on paper. The implementation of Art. 17 cannot take us back to the pre-directive situation but needs to pave the way concretely to visual authors being fairly remunerated for all their work».
TEXT OF EVA’S RESPONSE TO THE TARGETED CONSULTATION ON ART. 17 GUIDELINES