Creative Commons

The present paper strives to illuminate how the new related right for publishers, as introduced by the Digital Single Market Directive, will affect the digital publishing world. Is it going to enhance the press market and protect its beneficiaries or will it harm journalism and decrease publishers’ revenues? This thesis is mainly based on researches and studies conducted by research centers, universities and relevant to Copyright stakeholders. Since the EU directive has not yet been applied, our resources are inter alia position papers, announcements and letters prepared from associations representing journalists, publishers etc. to express their opinion and arguments on it. We will also use documents drafted by the European Institutions during the preparatory stage of the directive. On the first part, we will examine the newly introduced by the DSM Directive “related right for publishers” (Article 15) starting from indicating the inefficiency of the current situation and publishers’ rights to protect their own interests. Subsequently, we will focus on the examination of the special characteristics of the right by analyzing each paragraph of the provision; we will explain how a similar right affected publishers in several member states and we will use a case analysis on how the first country implementing the EU Directive transposed it into national law. At the end, we will contrast the opinions expressed to battle the introduction of this right and the answers given to those arguments, which support the latter and after this comparison we will conclude with an evaluation of the nature and usefulness of the right.