[WATCH] EU copyright proposals to aid Maltese students, but prove challenging for publishers

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The European Commission’s proposed revamp of copyright legislation look set to be welcomed by Maltese students and travellers, but pose fresh challenges to local publishers.

If passed, the proposals will allow European teachers to upload copyright material onto online learning platforms to all European students. Nationalist MEP Therese Comodini Cachia, who has been tasked to represent the European Parliament’s position on the reform, told a press conference that such a reform will prove beneficial to Maltese students who are undergoing online courses.

“As it stands, if a learning platform is based in Germany then there are different rules specifying what content it can upload for say, students living in Malta and those living in France,” she said. “We must remove these barriers so as to facilitate education as much as possible.”

However, Comodini Cachia also envisaged that the reform could pose problematic to Maltese publishers, who gain most of their income through the sale of educational books.

“Their income from the sale of educational books will probably take a hit, but the European Commission will allow its member states to compensate publishers as they see fit,” she said.

The copyright reform law will also allow people to enjoy the digital subscriptions they pay for at home while travelling across the EU on a temporary basis. This, Comodini Cachia explained, will mean that Maltese people will be able to access the same Netflix service they had subscribed to in Malta while travelling to other EU countries.

“The only issue here is to ascertain that people accessing these services are only travelling on a temporarily basis, which perhaps could be done by checking their ID addresses or credit card details,” she said, while pledging that the EP’s final proposal will be the one deemed “least invasive” to privacy.

The reforms also propose that “geo-blocking” - the practice of restricting online content based on the users’ geographical location – be banned across the EU - and that libraries, museums and archives be allowed to digitally preserve copyright works.

Elsewhere, they propose that video-sharing websites like YouTube will have to reach licensing deals with record labels and musicians to upload songs by third parties onto their websites. 

She cited how a video she had recently uploaded on her personal YouTube channel – of a RAI production that featured the involvement of Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri in the Panama Papers scandal – had been blocked on copyright grounds.

“The reason that happened was because YouTube and RAI have an agreement on the identification of RAI’s content. Their algorithm realized that my video had content belonging to RAI and blocked it, even though I had acknowledged in my video’s title that the content was RAI’s. Any algorithm must be designed in a way so that it only picks up and blocks the illegal videos.”

Comodini Cachia urged Maltese stakeholders to contact her with their concerns, saying that she plans to present her report "within the next few weeks".