Giancarlo F. Frosio

Digital piracy debunked: a short note on digital threats and intermediary liability

In the last two decades, the industry has deployed endlessly the rhetoric of the “digital threat” in order to demand harsher measures against digital piracy. Recently, the “digital threat” discourse called for enhanced liability of online intermediaries, especially those whose platforms may be used to infringe copyright. This short paper shows that the “digital threat” discourse is based on shaky grounds. Two related arguments might run against this approach. First, market conditions might incentivise piracy. Additionally, there are raising doubts over the argument that piracy is a threat to creativity, especially in the digital environment. Overall, it may be hard to find a factual justification for policy decisions based on the “digital threat” discourse. In fact, digital technology seems not to have negatively affected the creation of new works. In contrast, an observation of the literature and quantitative analysis on point may suggest that digital piracy can be an opportunity for the cultural market. Finally, piracy may function as an innovation policy by forcing market players to innovate in response to a consumer demand that widespread piracy highlights.

Reforming Intermediary Liability in the Platform Economy: A European Digital Single Market Strategy

Since the enactment of the first safe harbours and liability exemptions for online intermediaries, market conditions have radically changed. Originally, intermediary liability exemptions were introduced to promote an emerging Internet market. Do safe harbours for online intermediaries still serve innovation? Should they be limited or expanded? These critical questions—often tainted by protectionist concerns—define the present intermediary liability conundrum. Apparently, safe harbours still hold, although secondary liability is on the rise. As part of its Digital Single Market Strategy, the European Commission would like to introduce sectorial legislation that would de facto erode liability exemptions for online intermediaries, especially platforms. Under the assumption of closing a “value gap” between rightholders and online platforms allegedly exploiting protected content, the proposal would implement filtering obligations for intermediaries and introduce neighbouring rights for online uses of press publications. Meanwhile, an upcoming revision of the Audio-visual Media Services Directive would ask platforms to put in place measures to protect minors from harmful content and to protect everyone from incitement to hatred. Finally, the EU Digital Single Market Strategy has endorsed voluntary measures as a privileged tool to curb illicit and infringing activities online. This paper would like to contextualize the recent EU reform proposal within a broader move towards turning online intermediaries into Internet police. This narrative builds exclusively upon governmental or content industry assumptions, rather than empirical evidence. Also, the intermediary liability discourse is shifting towards an intermediary responsibility discourse. Apparently, the European Commission aligns its strategy for online platforms to a globalized, ongoing move towards privatization of enforcement online through algorithmic tools. This process might be pushing an amorphous notion of responsibility that incentivizes intermediaries’ self-intervention to police allegedly infringing activities in the internet.

Reconciling Copyright with Cumulative Creativity

Reconciling Copyright with Cumulative Creativity: e ird Paradigm examines the long history of creativity, from cave art to digital remix, in order to demonstrate a consistent disparity between the traditional cumulative mechanics of creativity and modern copyright policies. Giancarlo Frosio calls for the return of creativity to an inclusive process, so that the rst (pre-modern imitative and collaborative model) and second (post-Romantic copyright model) creative paradigms can be reconciled into an emerging third paradigm which would be seen as a networked peer and user-based collaborative model.