How Filters fail (to meet the requirements of the DSM directive)

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Three common failure modes of upload filters
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Article 17 of the DSM directive establishes that Online Content Sharing Service Providers (OCSSPs) are liable for copyright infringing uploads by their users unless they either obtain a license for the use of such content, or take a number of measures designed to prevent the availability of such content on their platforms. While the directive never explicitly talks about filters or automated content recognition (ACR) systems, it is assumed by all sides of the debate that, in order to meet this obligation, platforms have little choice but to implement ACR-based filtering systems that will scan all user uploads and block or remove uploads that contain works that have been flagged by their rightholders.

This de-facto requirement to implement upload filters is – by far – the most controversial aspect of the entire copyright directive and it continues to dominate the discussions about the implementation of Article 17 into national legislation.

In this context, it is important to remember that the use of such filters is not new and that their functioning can already be observed in practice. What is new, however, is the de-facto requirement for OCSSPs to implement filters as well as a number of requirements that OCSSPs need to meet to ensure that any measures (including filters) implemented by them are not infringing on the rights of users. This includes the requirement that any such measures “shall not result in the prevention of the availability of works or other subject matter uploaded by users, which do not infringe copyright and related rights, including where such works or other subject matter are covered by an exception or limitation“.

In other words, one of the most important contributions of the DSM directive is that, for the first time, it establishes conditions that need to be met by automated upload filters.

As we have argued many times before, these conditions present a very high hurdle for any technological solution to clear. The fact that upload filters are incapable of determining if a particular use of a copyrighted work is infringing or not has been established beyond any doubt. But that does not mean that the failure to assess the context is the only way that filters based on automated content recognition fail to meet the requirements established by the directive. In total there are at least three distinct ways how filters fail.

In the remainder of this post we will discuss these three failure modes based on examples collected by Techdirt in the course of a single week: removals caused by incorrect rights information, removals caused by the inability to recognise legitimate uses, and removals caused by the inability to accurately identify works.

Incorrect rights information

Incorrect rights information is probably the most common and best documented cause for the unjustified removal (or demonetisation) of works on YouTube.

ACR systems execute actions specified by whoever is recognised as the owner of a work. For the purposes of the ACR systems, the owner of a work is whoever claims to be the owner of the work and, unless there are conflicting ownership claims, there is no way to check the accuracy of such claims as there are no authoritative databases of ownership rights. As a result it is possible to claim ownership in public domain works (which no-one owns), in works that have been freely or widely licensed by their owners, or for any copyrighted work that has not already been claimed by someone else. Continue reading →

Video recording from last weeks COMMUNIA salon

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Last week Monday, on the first anniversary of the entry into force of the Copyright in the DSM Directive, we held the first virtual edition of our COMMUNIA Salon. During the event we presented an overview of the implementation status in the EU member states, zoomed in (sic!) on various legislative proposals to implement Articles 15 and 17 of the Directive and discussed ways to challenge parts of the Directive via the legal system. If you have missed the event you can watch a recording of the presentations and the subsequent discussion here: 

The event was kicked off by Teresa Nobre who launched the COMMUNIA implementation tracker and presented an overview of the implementation in the EU member states. While France has already implemented the press publishers right, the majority of EU member states are still in various stages of consultation. One year after the entry into force of the Directive, only Belgium, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands have put forward legislative proposals. Continue reading →

New policy paper on fundamental rights as a limit to copyright during emergencies

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Adjusting essential uses to new modes of living
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Today, Communia released a policy paper on fundamental rights as a limit to copyright during emergencies. This policy paper has been prepared in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused a massive disruption of the normal organization of society in many EU countries. 

In our paper we defend that, in order to transpose education, research and other public interest activities from public locations to private homes during government-imposed lockdowns, we need to be able to rely on the understanding that fundamental rights can, in exceptional situations, function as an external limit to our national copyright systems.

The main conclusions of our paper are the following:

First Conclusion

The educational and research exceptions and limitations provided for in Article 5(3)(a) of the InfoSoc Directive and in Articles 6(2)(b) and 9(b) of the Database Directive, and the public lending exception provided for in Article 6(1) of the EU Rental and Lending Rights Directive are mandatory for Member States, due to the fundamental rights that they internalize, namely those enshrined in Articles 11(1), 13 and 14(1) of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.Continue reading →

Article 17 Stakeholder dialogue: COMMUNIA input paper

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Our principles for the the Commission guidelines
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Given the ongoing health emergency, the European Commission’s stakeholder dialogue on the implementation of Article 17 of the Copyright Directive is currently suspended. The 7th meeting of the stakeholder dialogue, which was originally scheduled for Monday of this week and where the Commission was expected to “share initial views on the content of the guidelines”, has been cancelled and it is currently unclear how and when the stakeholder dialogue will be resumed. In the meanwhile, the European Commission is continuing its work on the guidelines.

While we are waiting for news on the future of the stakeholder dialogue we have produced an input paper for the Commission (pdf) that summarises our observations from the stakeholder dialogue so far and formulates a number of principles that the Commission should take into account when drafting its guidelines. In line with our initial principles, the input paper focuses on licensing, transparency and procedural safeguards for users’ rights. The paper builds on the model that we had presented during the last meeting of the stakeholder dialogue. 

Specifically, we are asking the Commission to include the following in the Article 17 implementation guidelines: 

  • Recommend to national lawmakers to fully explore all legal mechanisms (including collective licensing with extended effect, mandatory collective management schemes and other non-voluntary licensing schemes) for granting OCSSPs authorisation to have in their platforms copyright-protected works and other subject matter uploaded by their users.
  • Require that all ownership claims made in the context of the measures required by Article 17 must be made fully transparent to allow public scrutiny and prevent unjustified removals or blocking by rightholders claiming ownership of works that they do not own.
  • Require that OCSSPs publish statistical information on the number of removal/blocking actions as well as the number of complaints and the resolution of complaints arising as the result of such actions.
  • Requires that in cases other than obvious infringement and in order to prevent automated measures from affecting lawful uses, users must have the ability to override all automated actions before the blocking/removal takes effect.
  • Require that in case of obvious (“prima facie”) infringement uploaded content can be automatically blocked/removed under the condition that uploaders have the ability to easily and effectively challenge such blocks/removals.
  • Require that users must be able to rely on all existing exceptions as grounds for challenging removal/blocking actions and must be able to dispute the ownership claims on which an action is based.

Continue reading →

Article 17 stakeholder dialogue (day 6): Hitting a brick wall

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This week saw the sixth meeting of the EU stakeholder dialogue on the implementation of Article 17 of the new copyright directive. This meeting was the first one where the question of how to reconcile the protection of user rights’ with automated filters based on technology that cannot assess the legality of the use of copyrighted works was explicitly on the agenda. From the perspective of the users’ organisations participating in the stakeholder dialogue this is the main question that the stakeholder dialogue (and the guidelines that the Commission will have to issue afterwards) needs to address. 

Unfortunately, Monday’s meeting did not result in a productive discussion about how to protect users’ rights. Proposals made by COMMUNIA and Studio71 on how to strike a balance between the rights of users and the interests of creators and other rightholders were largely ignored by a coalition of major rightholders from both the music and the audio-visual sectors. Working in concert, the representatives of the Hollywood studios (MPA), film producers (FIAFP), commercial television channels (ACT), major record labels (IFPI) and music publishers (ICMP) disputed the fact that there is a tension between protecting users rights and automated blocking, restated their conviction that Article 17 is only about empowering them versus the platforms, and suggested that users should simply trust that rightholders will not block free speech or other legitimate uses. In doing so they have made it clear that they want their interests to prevail at all cost, that users should not be trusted and that for them user rights are something that should exist at their discretion. 

This outcome leaves the European Commission in the difficult position to make sense of the input gathered throughout the previous six meetings and to outline a way forwards. Fortunately it seemed that the Commission is not willing to succumb to the unconstructive behaviour exhibited by rightholders and will take serious its task of finding a balance between users rights and the interests of different types of rightholders. 

A proposals for protecting users’ rights

So how could such a balance look like and what is at stake? One of the key insights that emerged from the previous rounds of the stakeholder dialogue is that even the most advanced content recognition technology is incapable of understanding the context in which works are used. This means that technology alone cannot make the determination if a use is lawful or not. Article 17 requires platforms to take measures to prevent the availability of content that rightholders want to keep off the sharing platforms and, at the same time, to ensure that legitimate uses (such as quotations or parodies) are not affected. This means that no matter how good it is at recognising content, ACR alone cannot meet the requirements of the directive. Continue reading →

Article 17 stakeholder dialogue (day 5): It all depends

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Last week Thursday saw the 5th meeting of the Commission’s stakeholder dialogue on Article 17 of the copyright directive. On paper this meeting was the first meeting where the stakeholders had the opportunity to discuss the actual provisions contained in Article 17 of the directive in order for the Commission “to gather evidence, views and suggestions that the services of the Commission can take into account” when preparing its guidelines on the application of Article 17. 

Contractual freedom über alles

In reality (recording available here), the 5th meeting was the meeting where it became clear that the vast majority of represented stakeholders is not interested in constructively contributing to the process and is instead participating in order to actively undermine the stakeholder process. Interventions made by commercial rights holders from the Music and AV sectors, as well as by platforms, focused on demanding maximum contractual freedom and arguing that the Commission’s guidelines should not contain any binding requirements. When asked to provide input for defining core concepts of the directive (such as “best efforts to obtain authorisation” and “best efforts to prevent availability”), most stakeholders limited their contribution to countless variations of “it depends” or theorising about “dynamic concepts”.

While there were some notable exceptions (apart from users organisations, collective management organisations and journalists’ organisations provided substantive input), it can hardly be surprising that both rightholders and big platforms have no interest in substantive guidelines that would offer meaningful safeguards for user rights. Continue reading →

Article 17 stakeholder dialogue: What have we learned so far

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This analysis was previously published in two instalments on the Kluver Copyright Blog (part 1, part 2).

As 2020 unfolds, the European Commission’s stakeholder dialogue pursuant to Article 17 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM directive) enters its third (and likely final) phase. After four meetings that focussed on gathering “an overview of the current market situation as regards licensing practices, tools used for online content management […] and related issues and concerns”, the next two (or more) meetings will finally deal with issues raised by the provisions in Article 17 of the CDSM directive. According to the Commission’s discussion paper for the meetings of 16 January and 10 February 2020, the objective of the third phase “is to gather evidence, views and suggestions that the services of the Commission can take into account in preparing the guidance pursuant to Article 17(10)”. 

In other words, after four meetings that have set the scene, the stakeholder dialogue will now address some of the thorny issues raised by Article 17. These include the key concepts like the best effort obligations to obtain authorisation and to prevent the availability of content (Article 17(4)), as well as the safeguards for legitimate uses of content (Article 17(7)) and the complaint and redress mechanisms available to users (Article 17(9)). In preparation for these forthcoming discussions, it is worth recapitulating what we have learned since the stakeholder dialogue kicked off in October of last year. 

Three takeaways from the stakeholder dialogue so far

After more than 25 hours of discussion (recordings of the four meetings can be found here: 1, 2, 3 and 4), there are three main insights that will likely have a substantial impact on the overall outcome of the stakeholder dialogue. These are the different motivations of different types of rightholders; the technical limitations of Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technologies; and the general lack of transparency with regards to current rights management practices. The first two of these are discussed in this post and the third will be covered in part 2 which will be published shortly. Continue reading →

Article 17 stakeholder dialogue (day 4): it’s all about transparency

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The fourth meeting of the Article 17 stakeholder dialogue took place in the last week before the holiday break. Just like the third meeting, this meeting was dedicated to (more or less) technical presentations on content management technologies and existing licensing practices. In total there were 12 presentations from platforms (Facebook, Seznam, Wattpad), providers of content management tools (Audible Magic, Ardito, Fifthfreedom, Smart protection), rightholders (GESAC, Universal Music Publishing, Bundesliga) as well as by BEUC and the Lumen database.

Filters are context-blind

The day’s presentations largely repeated the lines of arguments different stakeholders had presented during the previous meetings (a recording of the full meeting can be found here). Most notably all providers of content recognition technology confirmed that their technology does not go beyond simple matching of files and cannot understand the context in which a use takes place. Audible Magic summarised this in their opening statement:

Copyright exceptions require a high degree of intellectual judgement and an understanding and appreciation of context. We do not represent that any technology can solve this problem in an automated fashion. Ultimately these types of determinations must be handled by human judgement […]

As we have argued after the third meeting of the stakeholder dialogue, this is an unsurprising but significant insight as it means that current technology cannot be used to automatically block or remove content uploaded by users. 

Platforms don’t trust rightholders

The presentation given by Facebook about Facebook Rights Manager, its in-house content recognition tool, highlighted another problem that such tools are facing: One of the “main challenges” that Facebook is facing with its Facebook Rights Manager tool is that rightholders abuse the tool by claiming rights in works that they do not own. As a result Facebook only makes the most sensitive functionalities (such as automated blocking of uploaded content) available to a small group of carefully vetted trusted rightholders. Continue reading →

Article 17 stakeholder dialogue (day 3): Filters do not meet the requirements of the directive

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Last week’s third meeting of the Article 17 Stakeholder dialogue was the first one of what the Commission had referred to as the 2nd phase of the dialogue. After two meetings of introductory statements by various stakeholders (see our reports here and here), the third meeting consisted of a number of more in depth technical presentations on content recognition technologies and on existing licensing models (Video recording available here). 

The morning session saw presentations from three technology providers. YouTube presented its own Content ID system, PEX presented its platform independent attribution engine and finally Videntifier showed off its video and image matching technology. 

The biggest part of the discussion in the morning was centered around understanding the way YouTube’s content ID system works and how it relates to copyright (hint: it’s complicated). The overall impression that arose from the discussion is that very few participants actually understand how content ID works (and those who do, like the big record labels, don’t seem to be interested in talking about it). The fact that the Commission was among those asking questions to get a better understanding of the inner working of content ID is rather striking in the context that evidence based lawmaking was supposed to be one of the priorities of the Junker commission. So far the stakeholder dialogue seems more like an exercise in legislation based fact finding. 

While many aspects of Content ID remained opaque, one thing became clear though-out the three presentations: none of the presented technologies can do more than matching content in user uploads. None of the technologies presented can understand the context in which a use takes place and as a result they are incapable of detecting if a use is covered by an exception or not. In the words of the technology providers (lightly edited for clarity): Continue reading →

Article 17 stakeholder dialogue (day 2): Filters, not licenses!

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On Tuesday this week the participants of the stakeholder dialogue on Article 17 of the EU copyright directive convened in Brussels for the second meeting. After a first meeting that focussed on practices in the music, games and software sectors (see our report here), this week’s meeting focussed on the current situation in the audiovisual (AV) and publishing sectors. 

Hollywood: Article 17 is about filtering after all

The meeting kicked off with a long series of statements from the many different rightholders in the AV sector (see the video recording here). The assembled sector representatives made it clear that from their perspective Article 17 is welcome (as it clarifies that online platforms need to obtain licenses for the works uploaded by their users) but that they are not interested in widely licensing AV works to UGC platforms and would instead focus on the blocking and removing of unlicensed content via the upload filtering mechanisms introduced by Article 17. 

This approach is the logical consequence of the predominant business model in the AV sector which relies on exclusive licensing to selected outlets (Cinema, TV, VOD platforms). It directly contradicts the music industries’ narrative from the first meeting that Article 17 is about licensing and not about blocking access – as in the case of music general availability is crucial. Representatives of the AV industry made it very clear that they would fight any attempts at non-voluntary licensing and that they would also fight against effective protection for user rights under exceptions and licensing (see for example the statement issued by the Motion Picture Association starting at 10:41:44 of the video recording). These initial statements make it clear that the AV industry does indeed look at Article 17 as an instrument to limit freedom of expression and reuse and will likely use the stakeholder dialogue to bend the article further in this direction. Continue reading →