EU approves controversial Copyright Directive, despite a major backlash from tech giants

An European parliament committee has voted in favour of the Copyright Directive, leaving tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Amazon in the lurch over publication rights.

The directive will force online publications to pay a portion of their revenues to publishers, and take on full responsibility for any copyright infringement on the internet.

As a result, any service that allows users to post text, sound, or video for public consumption must also implement an automatic filter to scan for similarities to known copyrighted works, censoring those that match.

In the weeks leading up to the vote, internet luminaries like the creator of the worldwide web Tim Berners Lee, and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, led protests against the directive.

Read more: The EU’s ‘carpet bomb’ copyright law heads to Brussels, as backlash mounts

The vote passed by the legal affairs committee is likely to be taken as the political body’s official line during further EU negotiations next month, unless a new vote is forced by lawmakers appealing the decision.

Other sections of the directive allow artists and authors to request higher payouts for the distribution of their content when they reach greater commercial success, as well as an expanded text and data mining right.

“The Directive will improve the rights of authors and performers and is good news for the creative industries, who will have a stronger hand to play in their negotiations with technology companies over monetising their content online,” said Phil Sherrell, a media specialist at international law firm Bird & Bird.

“There is some heavy lobbying still to come ahead of the full parliament vote early next month though – many tech companies in particular are concerned about what they see as a heavy-handed regulatory approach to issues which are already being worked out through negotiation.”