Editorial
| Author | Séverine Dusollier |
| Position | Sciences Po Law School, Paris |
| Pages | 275-276 |
Séverine Dusollier
2020
275
3
Editorial
by Séverine Dusollier
© 2020 Séverine Dusollier
Everybody may disseminate this ar ticle by electronic m eans and make it available for downloa d under the terms and
conditions of the Digital P eer Publishing Licence (DPPL). A copy of the license text may be obta ined at http://nbn-resolving.
de/urn:nbn:de:0009-dppl-v3-en8.
Recommended citation: Sé verine Dusollier, Editorial, 10 (2020) JIPITEC 275 para 1.
1 There is no doubt that 2020 will be a pivotal year in
European regulation of the digital economy.
Succeeding to the rst wave of regulation of the
internet, around the beginning of the second
millennium with the e-commerce and copyright in
the information society directives, a second wave
of legal intervention has been launched by the EU
Commission in 2015 with the Digital Single Market
Initiative. 2019 was certainly a crucial year in the EU
agenda, having seen the adoption of the directive on
copyright in the digital single market, of the directive
on contracts for the supply of digital content and
digital services, of the directive on contracts for the
sale of goods, as well as the revision of the public
sector information directive, inserting for the rst
time the “open data” in its title and contents.
2020 will see the implementation of this new EU
acquis and the rst discussion on what promises
to be as tense as what happened in copyright, the
revision of the rules of the platforms liability. The
Digital Services Act, announced by the new Von
der Leyen Commission, might reopen the Pandora
box of the regime applicable to intermediaries and
reshufe the rules applicable to platforms and other
digital operators.
2 This new issue of JIPITEC aligns with this legislative
agenda. It opens with its Statements section
featuring two manifests from EU scholars. The rst
one, endorsed by more than 50 copyright professors
and researchers, provides some recommendations
to Member States for the implementation of the
infamous article 17 of the DSM copyright directive,
by insisting on the need for video sharing platforms
to guarantee user freedoms when answering to
requests from copyright owners. Therefore, the
two key components of the regime so enacted, the
licensing and preventive measures by default of a
licence, should be interpreted in the light of the
exceptions and limitations provided to the benet of
the users. To that end, the Declaration recommends
to ensure a full harmonization and effectiveness
of the exceptions of quotation, criticism, review,
caricature, parody and pastiche, as those exceptions
are particularly considered as user freedoms in the
article 17. In order to minimize the risks of broad
ltering and over-blocking, Member States should
limit the application of preventive measures imposed
by the directive by default of a proper licence, to
prima facie copyright infringements, i.e. to uploads
of materials identical or equivalent to the work for
which rightholders have provided information. In
other cases, as the Declaration further recommends,
the uploaded content should not be presumed to
be infringing and more legal evidence should be
provided by copyright owners to allow for its
removal from the platform.
3
Such recommendations cleverly operate within
the manoeuvre that is left to Member States by
the directive and offers pragmatic and balanced
solutions that could be endorsed by the stakeholders’
dialogue set up by the directive to come up with
solution to implement the new regime. So far, this
dialogue, started last Fall, has only offered a pathetic
and useless replay of the lobbying that accompanied
the adoption of the directive.
4 A second Statement from three privacy academics
targets the European Data Protection Board (EDPB)
that is currently drafting some Guidance on data
rights and proposes recommendations to enhance
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