Publishers Weekly - October 12, 2017 Show Daily at Frankfurt

Christopher Kenneally is director, business development, at Copyright Clearance Center, and host of CCC’s podcast series “Beyond the Book”.

measure is meant to provide “a legal wrapper around what is made available [online] by the publisher,” Mills Wade explained. “They are neighbouring rights because they sit alongside the underlying rights of the authors.

“Broadcasters, music and film producers already benefit from a neighbouring right at the European level, so this is to bring press publishers in line with other producers of content,” she noted.

Under the European Commission proposal published in September 2016, press publishers would gain additional control over any re-use of content, including for terms and conditions of the re-use. For example, a news organisation could require a web aggregator to obtain a licence before re-publishing content in an online news digest.

“You might read in some articles that this is
‘a tax’ and that it is going to make platforms
and search engines pay for the re-use of
content,” Mills Wade said. “There’s nothing in
the proposal that mandates how any licence
agreement would be established and who pays
or how much is paid. It’s really about giving
clarity in the market to the standing of
publishers,” she insisted. “It’s been all too easy
for aggregators or other companies to help
themselves to publishers’ content and reuse it
without permission.”
As they consider the copyright directive,
In her advocacy for the new neighbouring right for
publishers, Mills Wade points out that quality journalism is
potentially at risk. Like writing and publishing books, she said,
news reporting requires significant outlays of resources, often
long before any publication.

“If publishers who are employing professionally-trained journalists can’t afford to fund everything from foreign war-torn reporting to very local correspondence, it matters a lot,” said Mills Wade. “Professional companies, employing professional journalists who have rights, but also responsibilities–that’s what makes a difference when you’re calling governments to account.” ■

Journalists and pundits have plenty to keep them busy in 2017. In Europe alone, there are

Brexit, the rise of populism and nationalism, as well as immigration issues to cover. The rise of so-called “fake news”, and growing scepticism about professional journalism and intellectual property rights only make matters worse.

The European Publishers Council (EPC) is a lobbying group composed of executives from leading European media organisations. Based in Brussels, Belgium, home of the European Commission and numerous European Union government bodies including the European Parliament, the EPC reviews the impact of proposed European legislation on news publishing, newspapers and journalism, and then expresses its collective opinion to legislators, politicians and opinion leaders.

Such a task is hardly either a simple or straightforward one in 2017–and certainly not for the EU, nor the press as an institution. As EPC executive director, Angela Mills Wade must take on the notoriously elaborate, even labyrinthine EU on the side of the media business. In a recent interview with me for Copyright Clearance Center (CCC)’s podcast series “Beyond the Book”, she provided a shorthand recipe for sausage-making at the European Parliament.

“Getting your voice heard and influencing the course of legislation is no mean feat because it’s so multifaceted,” Mills Wade explained.

Nevertheless, she considers the 751-member European
Parliament “a very open” organisation. “So normally speaking,
it’s not difficult to meet the members who are taking decisions
about your future through pieces of legislation. But on very
controversial issues like copyright reform,” she noted, “it’s very
crowded, so there are many, many people seeking the time and
attention of the members.”
Currently under review in Brussels is a European “directive”
on copyright that aims to “achieve a well-functioning
marketplace for copyright and the equitable sharing of the
value generated by the new forms of online content”. The new
directive would replace one in force since 2001.

Neighbouring right

Among the proposed measures is for a new “related” right that, says the legislation, would put news publishers “in a better negotiating position when they contract with online services using and enabling access to their content and thus to better fight piracy”. Also called a “neighbouring right”, the new