318 votes against and 278 votes in favor of MEPs rejected the contested copyright directive, whose opponents claim to risk imposing unprecedented censorship on the Internet. The project was returned to a committee where it will be seen again in the autumn. The draft proposed by the EU was endorsed with some amendments by a legal commission in June.

Then negotiations between the EP and the Council of the EU had to begin, ending with a plenary vote and the entry into force of the new rules. But after a sufficient number of lawmakers objected to the decision of the legal commission, the issue was voted in plenary today in Strasbourg. Parliament's Rules of Procedure state that if at least 10% of MEPs (76 people) object to the opening of negotiations with the Council on a text voted at committee level, a vote will be held in plenary. The necessary number of MEPs had filed their objections on the matter within the prescribed time - Tuesday at midnight.

The most controversial texts are concerning the protection of press releases when using them online - it transposes the copyright from the old Directive 2001/29 / EC into the digital age and provides that they are extinguished 20 years after the original publication. Critics say this text will require Internet search engines to pay the media for referrals to their sites. The other challenged article in the draft provides that service providers who store large volumes of works and other objects uploaded by their users and provide the public with access to them, take measures in cooperation with rights holders to ensure protection or to prevent the breach of their services. This requirement was attacked on the grounds that it would oblige social networks such as Facebook and YouTube to install filters to prevent the uploading of copyrighted materials.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!