BREAKING NEWS: draft impact assessment on review of EU copyright made available

A bit of spice just added
to Claire's peaceful morning,
courtesy of EU Commission 

Statewatch has just made available a link to the Commission's draft Impact Assessment (IA) on the modernisation of the EU copyright acquis [here and here]. Is this the already famous Commission's White Paper that Commissioner Barnier referred to in a tweet in February last?

Although this Kat is not so sure that this document is also 'freely available' on the Commission's website in the Svensson sense, it is nonetheless an interesting reading considering the good deal of attention [and responses: 11,117 according to Commission's Twitter sources] that the Public Consultation on the Review of EU Copyright Rules [here] has attracted. 

The IA is still a provisional version to be finalised in light of responses to the Public Consultation.

Among other things, the IA includes an overview of the legislative and non-legislative policy options that the Commission has been considering. These are:

1. "Relying on the market to improve the availability of content online, on Member States to take full advantage of the policy space available under the current legal framework [= doing nothing], and on the courts [read: the Court of Justice of the European Union] to clarify provisions of the Directives relevant to the development of new uses and services."
2. "Commission guidance [= soft law, eg Commission recommendations, MoUs, white, green and other colourful papers] to Member States as well as to market players, in line with the current legal framework, coupled with support for market initiatives [such as Licences for Europe?] and/or market monitoring."
3. "Legislative intervention aimed at achieving a much deeper level of harmonisation than is currently the case, clarifying the framework for some new uses and services and achieving a more systematic cross-border effect [= re-opening the copyright directives, notably the InfoSoc Directive]."
4. "[A] European Copyright Code would be developed. the Code would establish a unitary title  (covering the whole territory of the EU) replacing national ones." 

From what this Kat heard at the Fordham IP Conference last week, she would bet that the Commission goes for Option 2. But let's wait for the final version of the IA ...