Baby, one more time?: UK and the EU Copyright Directive

The EU Copyright Directive has been one of the most controversial legal issues in recent times. Will its provisions become law in the UK? 

The UK government said no for Brexit reasons back in January 2020. So it was with great intrigue that the suitability or otherwise of the EU Copyright Directive ended up as a term of reference in a Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (DCMSC) consultation on the economics of music streaming in the UK.  Even more surprising was DCMSC's report of that consultation, The Economics of Music Streaming, which despite acknowledging at least four times that the government "has repeatedly told us" no EU Copyright Directive, the DCMSC went on to make a number of key recommendations that look very similar to those in the EU Copyright Directive.     

We discuss the consultation and some of its key recommendations in this Briefing.  In particular, we look in further detail at the potential liability for online platform operators for copyright-infringing content uploaded by their users (Article 17), the right to transparency for artists on licensing deals (Article 19) and the right to contract readjustment (Article 20).