According to the authors of the Lisbon Council's Policy Brief, "copyright law has lost touch with the digital economy of today and tomorrow." Reform is needed to make copyright fit for purpose in the digital age. 

Professors Hargreaves and Hugenholtz label the European approach to reform as "rather cautious". The danger they see is that Europe’s copyright framework increasingly becomes a regime which meets no-one’s needs and expectations.

The authors present their proposals as a list of ideas, a "menu" for policymakers and admit that the first proposal (creation of a unified EU copyright law) may be too ambitious and even politically unrealistic. The proposals for a more harmonized and flexible set of limitations and exceptions and for proportionate levels of the term of protection make perfect sense, but will prove to be highly controversial.

The EBU appreciates in particular the proposals with respect to simplifying online licensing across the EU. The brief questions the effectiveness of the "multi-territorial licensing concept" in the current proposal for a directive on collective rights management and argue for more rigorous solutions. The authors give the example of the 1993 Satellite and Cable Directive’s "country of uplink" rule that could be extended to apply to all content services offered online. The EBU has argued for years for such a technologically-neutral extension of the country-of-origin principle, limiting however its application to online broadcast and broadcast-related services. The EBU's reason for such limitation lies in the fact that the country-of-origin principle is best suited for broadcasters.

The authors highlight the advantages of the extended collective licensing (ECL) mechanism as particularly suitable for solving the licensing problems related to mass digitisation projects. They propose a revision of the 2001 Information Society Directive to avoid uncertainty and clarify that ECLs are allowed. Over the past years, the EBU has promoted the ECL on many occasions (see Q&A on ECL). 

The EBU also welcomes the proposal for recalibrating the reproduction right insofar as it is only incidental to the act of communication to the public. The authors propose to better align the two rights, which is in line with the EBU's position in favour of a "common sense interpretation" of the reproduction right.

The authors of the Lisbon Council Policy Brief believe that all these proposals could be achieved by 2014-2015. The EBU agrees and hopes this will lead to serious debate in the coming years.