prijava
BRUSSELS, May 7 (FENA) - The goal of the Federal News Agency (FENA) is to speed up the adoption and implementation of the new EU directive on copyright in the legislation of Bosnia and Herzegovina because it is of great importance for the media and journalists, said FENA's General Manager, Elmir Huremović, participating in the panel discussion at the Spring Conference of the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) in Brussels dedicated to media funding, including copyright protection.
Huremović said that BiH, unfortunately, lags behind the EU countries regarding copyright protection. He emphasized that the BiH Copyright Law, adopted in 2010, implemented most of the EU directives in areas related to copyright adopted until then. The directives that entered into force after 2010 were not implemented in the legislation of Bosnia and Herzegovina primarily because BiH is not a member of the EU, even though it has the obligation under the Association and Stabilization Agreement to take all necessary measures to guarantee the level of protection of intellectual, industrial and commercial property rights no later than five years after the entry into force of this agreement.
"The Law on Copyright and Related Rights in BiH does not regulate the term 'journalist' in any provision, which does not mean that a journalist does not have a copyright to his/her work, but it means that it does not matter whether the person who created the work is necessarily a journalist or not. In general, this law in BiH is very similar to the laws in neighboring countries, and all EU directives adopted until 2010 have been incorporated into it. The biggest difference in the protection of copyrights compared to other countries in the region is not related to legal norms but to their implementation and protection, which in BiH is quite ineffective and inadequate, and the biggest problem is that copyrights are not regulated by a single law at the state level," emphasized Huremović.
According to him, what Bosnia and Herzegovina lacks when it comes to journalists and their work is a specialized organization for monitoring copyrights, as well as the fact that there is no organization that would charge a fee for a legal license for clips or displays and the like.
"FENA, as a responsible public media, is doing everything to point out the importance of these regulations to the wider public and contribute to the faster and more consistent application of European standards in the field of copyright protection in BiH as well," Huremović concluded participating in the EANA panel in Brussels.
In addition to Huremović, who is also a member of the EANA Board of Directors, Marco Giorelo, Head of Unit for Copyright at DG Connect, and Stefano de Alessandri, Director of the Italian agency ANSA, took part in the discussion panel moderated by the President of the French news agency AFP Fabrice Fries who is also a member of EANA Board of Directors and Christine Buhagiar, Europe Director at AFP.
Fries assessed that more attention must be paid to copyright and digital transformation.
He also presented the results of EANA's survey on copyright enforcement in Europe, citing as an example France where they had to go to court to convince social networking platforms that they had to pay for news published by news agencies.
He says that the platforms argued that news agencies have copyright over the news when they publish directly to users, which rarely happens.
"The platforms are now turning away from the news. The company Meta clearly emphasizes this, Google is starting to cancel all partnerships with the media, for which we have tangible evidence," emphasized Fries, who expressed fear of what will happen in the future with copyright and the relationship between media and platforms.
All participants in the panel discussion, which was attended by the directors of leading news agencies from Europe, agreed that the issue of copyright protection will be one of the key challenges for news agencies in the future and that it is necessary to establish the best possible monitoring to keep track of the implementation of all provisions of the EU directive that treats this area.
The general topic of EANA's Spring Conference was the protection of copyrights of news agencies in the age of artificial intelligence and the implications for the financial operations of the media in the future. The keynote speaker of the conference, the vice-president of the European Commission, Vera Jourova, warned that the development of artificial intelligence is so fast that it is necessary to take a more serious approach to the legal regulation of this area.
(FENA) A. B.
