EANA warns of weakening copyright protections in latest draft of the Code of Practice for General Purpose AI
The European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) raises serious concerns about the latest draft of the EU Code of Practice for General Purpose AI, warning that its vague language and reduced obligations weaken protections for rightsholders. For news agencies the proposed technical solutions for rights management are unsuitable.
Key issues, as signaled by EANA’s Copyright Committee, include the removal of clear obligations for signatories to publish copyright policies, ambiguous wording on lawful content reproduction, and insufficient measures to exclude piracy domains. The reliance on robots.txt for rights reservations remains problematic. For news agencies as rightsholders in the B2B markets robots.txt is completely unsuitable to apply differentiated rights management. In addition to that AI providers are only “encouraged” to prevent rights reservations from affecting search visibility.
The Committee also criticizes weakened due diligence requirements, allowing AI providers to rely on unverified claims from third-party data providers. Additionally, the CoP’s shift toward vague terms like “reasonable efforts” reduces enforceability, making compliance difficult to monitor.
Despite provisions for a point of contact for copyright complaints, signatories are not required to respond to those deemed “unfounded,” raising concerns about the practical impact of this measure.
EANA urges policymakers to strengthen the CoP to close loopholes and ensure meaningful copyright protection.
