International

The European Parliament today adopted the now notorious directive on authors' rights. The SP abstained in the vote. SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong explains: “It remained a difficult decision right to the end. As I wrote recently, it's important to us that artists receive a fair reward for their creativity. But we don't want to see disproportionate filters when you upload something. Unfortunately we weren't successful in having the directive completely clarified on this point. The intention was good, to make the tech giants pay artists for their products. The SP will continue to work for this in the Dutch Parliament. But this directive was still so unclear that we felt we had to abstain.”

For some time now both inside and outside the European Parliament, there has been an intense debate around the contents of the authors' rights directive. “If you take all the facts together you can see that this proposal represented an improvement on the original text which the EP voted down in September,” says De Jong. “But when the consequences of the vague formulations in the text are so unclear, then you don't really know what you're voting for or against.”

The present text, which will now go to the member states' parliaments, would give a number of exceptions to the continued enforcement of authors' rights, which would not be applied in educational and research publications, memoirs and parodies. The Dutch Parliament is set on adopting a law which offers authors an honest return, has the tech giants paying their share and keeps the internet as open as possible.