The EU Copyright Directive explained

Martin Reed

Martin Reed

Martin leads the SoA's Communications team. He oversees our strategic communications and campaign-based activities, including PR, social media, events and partnerships.
As we reported last month, the Copyright Directive has finally been agreed by the EU.


If implemented in the UK, the Directive could strengthen authors’ rights and bargaining power with publishers in various ways – it’s really important that authors understand these rights and know exactly what you are entitled to. But with Brexit looming, how likely is the Directive to be transposed into UK law? Do you know your Article 15 from your Article 17? Your transparency obligation from your bestseller clause? We know that discussions around the Directive are often overly technical and jargon-heavy.

That’s why we’ve produced a guide to the Copyright Directive which we hope explains these things in a more accessible way. We will need your help to push for it to be fully implemented – so we need you to understand exactly what impact it will have.

A copy of the guide is available below.

Please let us know if you have any questions or want to know more.

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