EU has decided on the rules of "copyright tax" Google and Facebook

Source: Zlata Milyavskaya / Vedomosti

Today it became known that the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission have decided on the structure of the directive, according to which technology corporations like Google and Facebook will have to pay copyright holders for using their content. Companies will have to obtain licenses for music and video clips before they are published, as reported by Vedomosti.

Companies will also have to take care of removing and blocking material that the author does not wish to publish. In addition, the media publishers also receive new rights. They can now claim compensation from online services that post long sections of materials published by such resources.

According to the authors of the draft law, these and similar rules will make it possible to establish “a balance between the promotion of innovation and the protection of European values.” “They [the rules] will improve the relationship between businesses and platforms and make them fairer and more transparent,” said Maria Gabriel, European Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Society.

Consideration of the draft directive may take place in April-May. After the adoption of the document, the EU countries will have two years to bring their own legislation into compliance with this directive.

It should be noted that the directive itself was proposed by the European Commission three years ago, in 2016. Currently, news aggregators and search services do not have to coordinate with publishers the use of excerpts from their published materials. Some publishers do not agree with this, believing that Internet companies do not give traffic, but rather deprive the media companies of their earnings.

Google and Facebook refuse to pay for the use of excerpts of articles or the display of photos from the sites of publications.

A Google spokesman has already stated that the company will study the final version of the directive, after which the company will plan further actions. Document details will be of particular importance. Google Inc. had previously reported that if the “law on authors” was adopted, it would simply disable the news service for all European countries. Previously, such a step has already been taken by the company - in respect of Spain. Up to this point, Google News has been disabled in Germany, but the publishers of this country, seeing a significant drop in traffic, have agreed with the corporation to resume the work of the news service.