ANNEX TO THE RESOLUTION:

RECOMMENDATIONS AS TO THE CONTENT OF THE PROPOSAL REQUESTED

A. PRINCIPLES AND AIMS OF THE PROPOSAL REQUESTED

In order to provide appropriate and effective legal protection of rights regarding live sports events, the current Union legal framework should be amended. This shall be achieved taking into account the following aims and principles:

— to improve and make the current Union legal framework on enforcement of intellectual property rights with regard to live sports events more effective, considering its specific nature and in particular the short-term value of such events, on the basis of best practices in the Member States;

— to introduce a Union system establishing common criteria for the certification of ‘trusted flaggers’;

— to clarify the existing legislation and adopt concrete measures to ensure the immediate removal of, or disabling of access to, online illegal live sports event content, including online illegal live sports event content notified by a certified trusted flagger to tackle efficiently illegal broadcasts of live sports events; to understand ‘immediate’ as meaning immediately or as fast as possible and in any event no later than within 30 minutes of the receipt of notification from rightholders or from certified trusted flaggers;

— to emphasise that intermediaries should put in place effective Know-Your-Business-Customer obligations to prevent their services from being abused to facilitate the illegal streaming of sports events; to that end, calls on the Commission to propose such obligations within the upcoming Digital Services Act;

— to further harmonise, where appropriate, procedures and remedies in the Union to improve and strengthen the efficiency of enforcement measures, including in the cross-border context, without prejudice to the general Union framework;

— to evaluate existing enforcement measures with a view to improving them and enabling the immediate take down of illegal live sport content, including illegal live sport content notified by a certified trusted flagger;

— to harmonise the use of swift and adaptable blocking procedures in the event of repeated already established infringements allowing for the immediate removal of, or the disabling of access to, illegal online live sport content, including when that illegal content is notified by certified trusted flaggers, based on the model of ‘live’ blocking orders and ‘dynamic injunctions’;

— to ensure that the measures to be proposed take into account the scope, magnitude and recurrence of the infringement and to target illegal transmissions, excluding the recording and posting of illegal amateur footage of sports events;

— to ensure that the measures to be proposed are proportionate and keep the right balance between the need for the enforcement measures to be efficient and the need to protect relevant third party rights, including those of service providers, fans and consumers;

— to clarify that the liability for the illegal broadcasting of sports events does not lie with fans and consumers;

— to complement the adaptation of the legislative framework with non-legislative measures, including reinforced cooperation between Member States’ authorities, rightholders and intermediaries;

B. ACTION TO PROPOSE

Without prejudice to the expected rules to be set out in a relevant Union law establishing general rules on tackling illegal content online, specific provisions regarding the rights of sports events organisers should be introduced in Union legislation, aimed, in particular, at:

— clarifying the concept behind the phrase ‘acts expeditiously’ referred to in Article 14 of the Directive on electronic commerce in relation to an online intermediary, such that ‘expeditiously’ is considered to mean immediately or as fast as possible and in any event no later than within 30 minutes of the receipt of the notification from rightholders or from a certified trusted flagger;

— establishing a common Union quality and technical reliability standard for software tools deployed by rightholders, intermediaries and other service providers, in order to identify illegal broadcasting of live sports events with a view to creating a certification scheme for ‘trusted flaggers’;

— providing that notifications issued by certified trusted flaggers are deemed to be accurate and reliable, and as a consequence, illegal online live sports event content notified by a certified trusted flagger should be immediately removed or access to it disabled, without prejudice to the implementation of complaint and redress mechanisms;

— allowing for immediate take down procedures targeting illegal live sports event content, provided that there is no doubt about the ownership of the right concerned and that the transmission was not authorised;

— ensuring that the measures to be taken by intermediaries are effective, justified, proportionate, adequate, taking into account the seriousness and the scale of the infringement, by making sure, for example, that the removal of, or the disabling of access to, illegal content does not require the blocking of an entire platform containing services that are legal;

— taking measures that make it easier to find legal means of accessing sports content, including by regularly updating the list of providers of such means on Agorateka.eu and ensuring that viewers are informed of such legal means and how to use such means to access content when the blocking measures are enforced;

— providing and actively supporting enforcement solutions, such as private agreements among stakeholders; in this respect, the Commission should report on and assess the appropriateness and impact of creating an obligation for online content providers to perform immediate take downs to remove or disable access to illegal sports events broadcasts available on their services;

Directive 2004/48/EC (the Enforcement Directive) should be amended in order to:

— introduce the possibility for the relevant judicial or administrative authority to issue injunctions requesting the real-time disabling of access to, or removal of, illegal online live sports event content;

— allow the use of blocking injunctions that run during the entire live broadcast of a sports event, but are limited to the duration of the live broadcast, thus blocking the infringing website only for the duration of the event; such injunctions should be temporary;

— harmonise legislation allowing, where live sports events are concerned, for the use of injunctions that should have the effect of blocking the access not only to the infringing website, but to any other website that contains the same infringement, regardless of the domain name or IP address used, and without the need for a new injunction to be issued;

— specify that the removal of the illegal content should take place immediately, or as fast as possible and in any event no later than within 30 minutes of the receipt of the notification from rightholders or from a certified trusted flagger, provided that the illegality of the broadcast has been notified by a certified trusted flagger or, in case of unambiguity, by the rightholder himself; a strong indication should be given to the rightholders or certified trusted flaggers to prevent any removal of legal content; to that end, disabling access to or removing illegal content should in principle not necessitate blocking access to a server that hosts legal services and content;

— reinforce cooperation between Member States’ authorities, including by way of exchange of data and best practices and by creating an active and up-to-date network of national authorities; the Commission should assess the added-value of appointing an independent administrative authority in each Member State that would have a role to play in the enforcement system, especially in the case of swift enforcement, such as for online piracy of live sport content;