Authors’ rights highly debated in the European Parliament

The European Commission will release this fall its Copyright review package, an important document aiming at amending current EU legislation in the field of copyright/authors’ rights. In the meantime, an initiative report by Pirate party member Julia Reda led to heated debates in the hemycle by threatening to widen exceptions to copyright/authors’ rights, thereby preventing authors from additional remuneration in situations when their work is used without their authorization. An amendment to the initial report sujects the taking of photographs of works located in public spaces to the authorisation of their author, when the photograph is used for commercial purposes.  The report however rightly calls for improvement of the contractual situation for authors and performers, thus implying that freedom of contracts should not apply as such to creators. Update:Members of the European Parliament adopted Julia Reda's report on 9th July without new Freedom of Panorama curbs. A positive move for photographers.