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Thursday March 28, 2024

Polish dailies print blank page in copyright reforms

By AFP
March 26, 2019

WARSAW: Major Polish newspapers printed blank front pages on Monday in an appeal to the European Parliament to adopt controversial copyright reforms that have pitted traditional media firms against internet giants.

"Today, we appeal to Polish members of the European Parliament for solidarity in supporting a vote on the Copyright Directive in the digital single market," read a petition signed by editors-in-chief of 30 Polish national and regional dailies backing the reforms.

"Creators do not receive sufficient compensation for disseminating their works on the Internet. They often live in real poverty or leave the profession," said the statement published by the centrist Rzeczpospolita daily and other newspapers including the liberal Gazeta Wyborcza and the Fakt tabloid.

The run-up to the European Parliament vote on Tuesday has seen furious lobbying and protests by both supporters and opponents of the law, which is designed to update European copyright legislation that pre-dates most online social media and is now nearly two decades old.

Under the changes, European law for the first time would hold platforms legally responsible for enforcing copyright, requiring them to check everything that their users post to prevent infringement.

The reform, two years in the making, is loudly backed by media companies and artists who want to obtain a better return from web platforms -- such as YouTube or Facebook -- that use their content.