Smart Screen Exclusive

By Paul Sweeting

We now have a date for when the first pieces of the European Union’s long-range plan to create a single EU-wide market for digital goods and services will begin to fall into place.

On Dec. 9th, the European Commission is expected to introduce a legal proposal to guarantee the “portability” of digital content services across borders within the 28-nation bloc.

“Put simply, this means allowing people who have signed up to online content services in one EU country – for books, music, games, films, drama, sport – to use those services when they are temporarily present in another one,” the Commission’s vice president for the Digital Single Market (DSM) initiative Andrus Ansip wrote in a blog post dated Nov. 18th.  “If they have paid for access rights, say to a film, in their home country, they should be able to watch it if they travel across an internal EU border. Today, often they cannot do this.”

The portability proposal, which would need to be adopted by the European Parliament to become effective, would be the first step in what is expected to be a months-long rollout of proposals to overhaul EU copyright rules, as well as digital licensing and business practices around copyrighted content.

In addition to the portability proposal, the Commission this month will release a strategy paper for copyright reform, including steps to be taken in 2016, Ansip said. Some of those expected proposals were spelled out last month in an apparent leaked draft of the strategy paper.

The copyright elements are only one part of broader strategy to stitch together a single market for digital goods and services in the EU, however. The Commission is also conducting consultations on reforms to the EU Cable and Satellite Directive governing pay-TV services to address online distribution, as well as EU telecom rules and rules governing “online platforms” (search engines, social media, app stores, etc.) in the market.

The whole process is likely to be controversial, however. Ansip faced a skeptical audience of filmmakers in an appearance last month at the European Film Forum in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, who fear that proposals to gradually eliminate territorial exclusivity in content licensing will undermine financial support for production.

Ansip insisted he supported the elimination of exclusivity only for digital content, not for films released in theaters or other types of non-digital content.

The scheduled release of the content portability proposal this month also drew fire from a consortium of industry groups spearheaded by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), who complained in letters sent to Ansip and to members of the European Parliament that moving ahead with copyright reform while many other copyright-related consultations such as the review of the Cable & Satellite Directive remain pending could lead to contradictory outcomes.

“Signatories to the letters rightly point out that the Commission is expected to present a Communication on copyright at the same time as it continues to consult on important copyright-related matters,” CCIA European director Jakob Kucharczyk said in a statement. “In practice, stakeholders’ answers to the consultation on platforms will not be taken into consideration as the Commission sets out its vision for copyright rules for the years to come.”

Stay tuned.