Art. 13(1) of the © in DSM Directive: a comparative perspective

This presentation illustrates the reasons that in the Nineties led the USA Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) drafters to leave out of the Act a provision imposing content recognition technologies.

The drafters reached the conclusion that imposing such an obligation on providers would create a number of imbalances between the rights at stake and threaten the public interest.

We argue that despite the technological development, the same reasons still hold true today and that the European Union should resist imposing such obligations on providers. Hence, art. 13(1) of the Proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive) should be delated.

Finally, we maintain that in case of enactment of the current text, the Court of Justice of the EU could still help in re-balancing the rights at stake and serving the public interest that art. 13(1) would threaten.