Five EU countries oppose the EU copyright directive

In a joint statement from five European countries posted on the Kingdom of Netherlands website, they oppose the EU Copyright Directive. The text of this EU copyright directive was finalized two weeks ago and met with a lot of criticism. Article 11 and Article 13 of the directive enforce copyright restrictions that would be almost impossible to implement and would break the functioning of media and news as we know now.

The five EU countries opposing the directive are Netherlands, Luxembourg, Poland, Italy, and Finland. They do support the intentions of stimulating innovation, creativity, production of new content etc,. But they note that the finalized text of the directive does not meet with these intentions or objectives.

The final text does not strike a good balance between copyright holders and EU citizens, and companies. Therefore, they feel that it’ll only hinder innovation as opposed to promoting it. The countries think the directive will have a ‘negative impact on the competitiveness of the European Digital Single Market’.

They also express that the directive lacks legal clarity and will lead to uncertainties encroaching EU citizen rights.

The Kingdom of Netherlands website displays: “It [EU Copyright Directive] fails to strike a balance between protecting right holders and the interests of individual citizens. This is why the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Poland, Italy and Finland don’t support the final package.”

Hence, they state in the document that they do not consent with the proposed text of the Directive.

This is a good move, but many find other EU countries missing in the document.

A hacker news user says: “where's Sweden and Denmark? Or the much-hyped E-stonia?”