Yesterday, the European Parliament voted to reform its copyright laws across all EU states, with a series of amendments tabled for debate.
The initial draft for the reform of the copyright law was written by Julia Reda, a member of the European Parliament for the German Pirate Party, but was later amended in June, following a series of consultations with various EU political parties.
During these negotiations, five changes were introduced to Ms Reda's original draft. In yesterday's vote in the European Parliament, three of these amendments were not accepted.
One of the amendments that was not accepted refers to an amendment to the text of the law concerning the abolition of the European Commission's guidance on copyright limitations and exceptions.
Those defeated were those most dangerous to the freedoms of EU citizens, including Freedom of Panorama, which was trying to pass restrictions on taking photographs in public spaces.
The second amendment referred to the right of artists and professionals to make their content available online for free, something that EU lawmakers wanted to prohibit and force them to demand financial compensation for their work, even if they did not want to.
This is in practice nullified by any open licenses, such as Creative Commons, and denies an individual the right to do whatever they want with their content.
The third amendment was the intention of creating a tax on online news.
After major lobbying efforts by media groups, this amendment would allow any news agency to charge other companies or professionals for using their stories.
This amendment had the potential to destroy the quality of content circulating online. This is especially true for search engines like Google or Bing, which would have to pay for any news links that appeared in their search results.
