The recent approval of the European Copyright Directive in the digital market has sparked a heated international debate involving publishers, Internet Service Providers and users.
The most controversial and debated provisions were those on the preventive control by online content-sharing service providers of content uploaded by users and on the so-called “link tax” imposed on ISPs.
On the sidelines of the debate, however, some curiosities emerge, such as the translation errors in the Italian version of the directive.
While Article 17(7) of the Directive in the English version provides that:
“7. The cooperation between online content-sharing service providers and rightholders shall not result in the prevention of the availability of works or other subject matter uploaded by users, which do not infringe copyright and related rights, including where such works or other subject matter are covered by an exception or limitation.”
In the Italian version the article has been paradoxically transformed, becoming an obligation to remove content that does not infringe copyright.
“7. The cooperation between online content-sharing service providers and rightholders must prevent the availability of works or other subject matter uploaded by users, which do not infringe copyright or related rights, including where such works or other subject matter are covered by an exception or limitation.”
In short, if the Directive were applied to the letter, Italy would see a crackdown on works that DO NOT infringe copyright.
Besides this glaring error, copyright expert Eleonora Rosati, after analyzing the text of the Directive with the help of numerous experts from various EU countries, wrote on IPKat that another paragraph of Art. 17 appears to have been translated differently in the various EU languages.
In short, while in Spain a greater effort by ISPs is enough to obtain authorization to publish from copyright holders, in other countries “best efforts” would be required.
Several similar episodes had also occurred when translating the GDPR into the various European languages. For example, in the Italian translation, “archive documents” became “registers of public interest”, while the term “right” was translated as “prerogative”.
But what happens when a translation of a directive or regulation contains errors?
One must wait for the publication of the so-called “Corrigendum” or "Rectification", the official document published by the European institutions that makes the appropriate corrections.