Creativity Works! urges policymakers to support an ambitious Report on the Platform-to-Business Draft Regulation

05.12.2018

Creativity Works! is a leading European coalition of the cultural and creative sectors. Our coalition
represents writers, screenwriters, video game developers, broadcasters, book publishers and retailers,
cinema operators, sports organisers, picture agencies, music and film/TV producers, publishers and
distributors.

We view the European Commission’s Platform-to-Business Regulation as a step forward in promoting
fair digital business practices and ensuring a balanced relationship between online platforms and their
business customers. Whilst many of the IMCO compromise amendments would lead to a win-win
situation for both consumers and enterprises in Europe, we find it important to ensure meaningful
obligations for online intermediation services/online search engines when it comes to business users’
intellectual property rights and access to data. In our view, some compromise amendments do not
take into consideration this position, which is supported by a majority of MEPs from different groups
and different committees.

We believe greater clarity is still needed on two issues, as follows.

Intellectual property rights
The intellectual property rights of business users and relevant third parties should be properly
respected in the business-to-platform relationship, with platforms only making use of these rights
when explicit consent has been given, or when under license, or when under applicable exceptions
and limitations.

Whilst this principle has been recognised by JURI in its Opinion on the proposal, namely by JURI 25, it
is not addressed in any of IMCO’s compromise amendments. In particular, we fail to see how this
amendment could be covered by IMCO’s CAM 23 on Article 3, as suggested by the compromises.

• We therefore call you to support, via a separate vote, JURI’s Amendment 25 on respect for
intellectual property rights. This reads: “21a. This Regulation should be without prejudice to
the intellectual property rights held by business users. Providers of online intermediated
services should make use of these rights only upon explicit consent of the business user and
should adhere to the terms of use of such rights. The intellectual property rights of third parties
should also be respected.”

Access to data
Despite suggesting it covers IMCO Committee amendments 516, 519, 520 and 522, we find that CAM
6 does not form a satisfactory compromise. We welcome the suggestion that online intermediation
services must communicate transparently with business users. However, when it comes to introducing
an obligation for online intermediation services to grant business users’ access to consumers’ data
generated by the activity of the consumer, the compromise amendment narrows down this obligation
to data related to ratings and reviews only. This fails to address the needs of the cultural and creative
sectors.

Business users should have access to any data which consumers provide and which relate to the
concerned business users’ services. This obligation is without prejudice to the obligations under
applicable data protection and privacy rules. Additionally, the use of data by the online intermediation
service should be limited to the sole purpose of providing their service.

This also fails to take into consideration the related opinions that have been adopted in the ITRE and
JURI Committees, which more forcefully support business users’ demands for data.

• We therefore call on you to support a separate vote on IMCO Committee amendments 516,
519, 520 and 522 to ensure the data access rights of business users of online intermediation
services are adequately protected. Ensuring business users’ access to this data can help them
formulate important business decisions around market demand, which is beneficial overall for
Europe’s consumers.