YouTube’s CBO speaks out against Article 13 of EU’s controversial copyright law

Robert Kyncl, YouTube's Chief Business Officer, opened up on YouTube’s Creator Blog, on Tuesday. This was about  “Article 13” in the EU proposal, which is currently up for a vote in the European Parliament on September 12.

In a nutshell, any user-generated content on these online platforms that a copyright enforcement algorithm considers as copyrighted work would need to be censored by these platforms. This is a new revamped version that EU has come out with as the older version was rejected by the Parliament back in July. The older version also received heavy criticism from different policy experts and digital rights group on grounds of violating the fundamental rights of the internet users.

“The "Article 13” potentially undermine this creative economy, discouraging or even prohibiting platforms from hosting user-generated content. This outcome would not only stifle your creative freedom, it could have severe, negative consequences for the fans, the communities and the revenue you have all worked so hard to create,” mentioned Kyncl.

Kyncl also pointed out how the creators and artists on these platforms have built businesses “on the back” of this “openness”.  YouTube has a strong set of copyright management tools like Content ID and a Copyright Match Tool which are pretty efficient at managing the re-uploads of creators’ content.

“Copyright holders have control over their content: they can use our tools to block or remove their works, or they can keep them on YouTube and earn advertising revenue. In over 90% of cases, they choose to leave the content up. Enabling this new form of creativity and engagement with fans can lead to mass global promotion and even more revenue for the artist.” reads the YouTube blog post.

A good example given by Kyncl is that of a famous pop singer, Dua Lipa whose singing career started with covering songs of other Artists. Also, Alan Walker’s worldwide famous track “Fade”  was heavily used by other users in the YouTube community along with being used in video games. This resulted in a massive fanbase for him.

YouTube is not the only one disapproving of the new proposal. Other organizations such as  European Digital Rights, the Internet Archive, Patreon, Wordpress, and Medium have all opened up about their disapprobation against the EU copyright policy.

“This is the new creative economy in action. The Copyright Directive won’t just affect creators and artists on YouTube. It will also apply to many forms of user-generated content across the Internet” writes Kyncl.

For more information, check out the official YouTube blog post.

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