Following the European Parliament’s approval of modernised copyright rules earlier this week, today the Parliament endorsed another crucial piece of legislation to make the copyright rules fit for the digital age. The Commission in a statement welcomed the positive vote for the Directive that will simplify cross-border distribution and retransmission of television and radio programmes.
The text adopted by the European Parliament this week will have to be formally endorsed by the Council of the European Union. Once published in the Official Journal of the EU, Member States will have 24 months to transpose the new rules into their national legislation.
The new rules will be particularly relevant for the 41% of Europeans who watch TV online but also for the linguistic minorities, as well as the 20 million EU citizens who are living abroad in another EU country.
The new rules will provide:
• New opportunities for broadcasters, through the country of origin principle that will facilitate the licensing of rights, to make certain programmes on their online services available across borders (services covered are simulcasting, catch-up services and other services that complement the main broadcast, such as previews).
• A wider choice of radio and TV programmes offered by retransmission services provided through Internet Protocol television (IPTV), satellite, digital terrestrial, mobile networks or over the internet. The Directive applies a facilitated rights clearance mechanism – the system of compulsory collective management – to retransmission services provided through means other than cable (e.g. over internet), making it easier to obtain authorizations required to retransmit radio and TV channels from other Member States.
• Legal certainty for transmissions of radio and TV programmes through direct injection, ensuring that rights holders are adequately remunerated when their works are used in programmes transmitted through direct injection.
Vice-President for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip and Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel said in a joint statement that the approval of the Directive on television and radio programmes by the European Parliament compliments the modernisation of the EU copyright rules launched in 2015 and we are getting another step closer to a fully functioning Digital Single Market.
He added that they will make it easier for European broadcasters to make large parts of their TV and radio programmes available online in all EU countries, while ensuring that creators, authors and rights holders are adequately paid for the use of their content.
