EFJ responds to EC Consultation on enforcement of intellectual property rights

The European commission launched a public consultation on the efficiency of proceedings and accessiblity of measures. The EFJ response is available here. Summary Societies and democracies depend upon professional media working to the highest ethical and professional standards. These in turn require individual journalists to maintain high standards of reliability, accuracy and integrity of news reporting - and they can only do this if their creativity and independence is strongly protected. The EFJ points at 4 concerns that must be further examined to maintain strong authors' rights protection for journalists  Reinforcement of authorship and economic rights 'protection for sustaining journalistic works Need for small claim court proceedings Need to strengthen metadata protection Licence for first use is not complete assignment of rights