Council of States discusses copyright with clause for media publishers

In the future, operators of social networks and other Internet platforms are to owe publishers remuneration if they make journalistic works accessible. This primarily involves text snippets and references to articles that are displayed to Internet users in services such as Google News.

In this way, the Internet platforms can gain data for advertising marketing or place advertisements for the text outlines and thus earn money - from the publishers' point of view, money that they are losing. Users may be content with the text outline on the social network and not click on the link that would take them to the media portal.
 

A compensation scheme is currently also being debated in the EU, under the title of "ancillary copyright". The proponents argue with the difficulties of the media industry due to the loss of advertising revenues. The critics claim that the ancillary copyright would only serve the big publishers, but not the small providers.

According to the proposal of the Council of States Commission, the making available of individual words without independent journalistic meaning together with links that lead users to the original publication or to the information service that published the article would not have to be remunerated.

It remains to be seen what the Council of States will decide. Its preliminary committee voted 7 to 3 with one abstention in favor of anchoring such a regulation in copyright law.

In the winter session, the National Council voted 133 to 39 with 5 abstentions against a corresponding motion from the ranks of the SP. The majority found that the media crisis could not be solved in this way. It was also unclear how the platforms could be held accountable for the behavior of users. (More on the "ancillary copyright": Republik.ch: "A tax for stolen clicks".)

The Council of States Commission is also proposing changes to other points in the revision of copyright law. For example, non-profit libraries that operate purely on a cost-covering basis should not have to pay remuneration to the collecting societies on their flat-rate fees.

This also applies to educational institutions, museums, collections and archives that operate on a purely cost-recovery basis. The commission thus wants to reverse a system change that goes back to a decision by the Federal Arbitration Commission in December.

The Council of States commission agrees that filmmakers should receive remuneration for video-on-demand use. The regulation is intended to take into account the increasing online use of works and the disappearance of video stores.

However, the Commission proposes to exempt music in films from such a remuneration obligation. It does not want to change the procedure that has worked well so far, in which a collecting society negotiates with the video-on-demand platforms on behalf of the musicians, the commission argues. The Federal Council's draft would lead to additional work and costs as well as less revenue for the artists.

The commission followed the National Council's lead on the hotel tax: hotels, hospitals and prisons should no longer have to pay for the use of public works in their rooms. The use is to be defined as personal use.

However, this was controversial in the Council of States committee: The WBK decided with a casting vote by Commission President Ruedi Noser (FDP/ZH). Opponents see the abolition of the tax as an unjustified measure in favor of the hotel industry. The Federal Council had also spoken out against it.

The core of the copyright revision is the fight against piracy. This is to take place at the Swiss hosting providers that store content. Already today, providers usually remove content from their servers upon notification if it infringes copyrights. In the future, they will have to prevent the illegal content from being uploaded again - without having to report it again. If they fail to do so, they can be prosecuted.

Originally, the Federal Council also wanted to hold access providers - the Internet access providers - accountable. They were to be required to block access to certain sites on the instructions of the authorities. However, following criticism in the consultation process, the Federal Council refrained from imposing network blocks. (SDA)