Commission of the Council of States holds hearings on copyright law

The Commission for Science, Education and Culture (WBK) announced on Friday that it had obtained information from the Institute for Intellectual Property about the scope for action. It then held hearings.

Participants included the professional association Impressum, the Swiss Media Association, Google Switzerland and the Alliance for Fair Copyright. The discussion is to be continued at the next meeting at the end of April.

The hearing focused on the obligation to pay remuneration for making journalistic content accessible and the ancillary copyright for press publishers. The Federal Council's draft bill, which was based on the compromise of a working group with interest groups, did not include these regulations. It was the Commission that included provisions on this.

However, the Council of States decided in the spring session to refer the bill back to them. The WBK is to review its decisions and take current legal developments in the EU into account.

Under the Commission's proposal, operators of internet platforms would in future owe publishers a fee when they make journalistic works accessible. This primarily concerns text outlines and references to articles that are displayed to internet users in services such as Google News.

In this way, the internet platforms can obtain data for advertising marketing or place advertising on the text snippets and earn money - money that they lose from the publisher's point of view. This is because users may be satisfied with the text snippet in the social network and not click on the link that would take them to the media portal.

In the Council of States, the majority felt that the Commission's proposal was not yet fully developed. Critics also pointed out that the revision now deviated considerably from the compromise of the Agur12 working group. (SDA)

Photo: Parliamentary Services, Bern