The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) welcomes the political agreement reached on the DSA by the EU negotiators.
We wish to convey our thoughts and reactions based on the “4-column document” dated 25 April..
First and foremost, the AAPA remains very concerned about the so-called issue of “subsidiarity” in recital 40b, which specifies that hosting services providers who cannot remove notified content for technical or operational reasons, should inform the person or the entity who submitted the notice. From AAPA’s perspective, this wording contains no guarantee that notified content will ultimately be removed or its access disabled, since hosting services will have no incentive to expeditiously remove or disable access to illegal lbroadcasts. This recital will thus be extremely harmful for the entire audiovisual value chain and will leave the door open for audiovisual piracy to spread even more in the European Union, preventing the DSA from achieving the objective of ensuring that "what is illegal offline is illegal online", using Commissioner Breton's own words.
In addition, we believe that not extending the so-called “Know Your Business Customer” (KYBC) obligations to all online intermediaries is a missed opportunity
(Article 24a). In practice, the extension of the KYBC obligation would have been an effective means to fight audiovisual piracy by allowing the collection of data and the verification of the identity of professional clients of all intermediaries.
Despite these missed opportunities, the AAPA welcomes the final provisions introduced in the notice and action mechanism (Article 14)
which provides that actual knowledge of illegal content is triggered when the content is notified and specifies that hosting services will remove such content without carrying out a detailed legal examination. As a reminder, our members do not face the same challenges as other sectors in terms of interpreting the legality of content as it is usually watermarked or digitally fingerprinted and we are able to provide a clear list of the licensees that are legally allowed to show it.
Finally, regarding trusted flaggers (Article 19), the AAPA fully supports the deletion of the reference to the fact that entities need to represent collective interests to apply to this status.
Article 19 will now allow rightsholders and technical providers who have a strong expertise and direct legal interest in flagging illegal content to be recognized as trusted flaggers, continuing a practice which exists now.
The AAPA will remain attentive to ensure that the DSA’s implementation lives up to its promise of better addressing illegal content online. Going forward, we also very much look forward to the upcoming initiative of the European Commission on the piracy of live audiovisual content, which we hope will complement the DSA by recognizing the need for a specific regulatory framework for this type of content.
About AAPA
The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) represents 28 companies involved in the provision of protected audiovisual services, security technology for protecting such services and the manufacturing of products which facilitate the delivery of these services. Our membership is geographically diverse with companies from Europe, the Middle East, Russia and America, and includes the whole audiovisual value chain, such as rightsholders, platform operators, telecommunication companies, OTT providers, broadcasters and technical service providers. Many of our members are global businesses.
Our aim is to tackle piracy, particularly pertaining to the development, promotion, distribution, application or use of technologies aimed at allowing illegal access to content. Members are facing a concerning growth in volume of unauthorised use of protected audiovisual content. Within AAPA, they coordinate intelligence and action through effective dialogue and interaction with other stakeholders and law enforcement.