The EU has decided on the rules of "copyright taxation" 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 Vedomosti reports .

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

According to the authors of the bill, these and similar rules will make it possible to establish a “balance between stimulating innovation and protecting 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 Digital Economics 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 legislation into compliance with this directive.

It is worth noting that the directive itself was proposed by the European Commission three years ago, in 2016. At present, news aggregators and search services should not coordinate with publishers the use of excerpts from the materials they publish. Some publishers do not agree with this, believing that Internet companies do not give traffic, but rather deprive media companies of earnings.

Google and Facebook refuse to pay for using excerpts from articles or displaying photos from publisher sites.

A Google spokesman has already said that the company will study the final version of the directive, after which the company will plan further actions. The details of the document will be of particular importance. Google has previously reported that in the event of the adoption of the "law on authors" it will simply disable the news service for all European countries. Previously, such a step has already been taken by the company - in relation to Spain. Until that moment, Google News was also turned off in Germany, but the publishers of this country, seeing a significant drop in traffic, agreed with the corporation to resume the news service.