Copyright A lobbying mess revolves around the Copyright Act – Minister Kurvinen recruited a consultant and 50 pages were removed from the bill, the official changed positions

EU Copyright Directive Several unusual twists and turns have been experienced in the legislative work related to the introduction in Finland.

After a round of drafting of the bill, the ministry’s management unexpectedly hired a consultant to complete the project. Jukka Liedes. After that, the chief draftsman of the law reform stepped down.

According to the Association of Telecommunications Companies, the draft law has changed so significantly that it would require a new round of opinions. However, the Minister of Science and Culture does not Antti Kurvisen (center) is not coming.

Consultant Jukka Liedes, who previously served as an official in the Ministry of Education and Culture (OKM), was hired in November 2021 to complete the copyright reform.

The implementation of the Copyright Directive in Finnish legislation has been led by OKM’s Copyright Adviser Viveca Still. To Still and his supervisor To Jorma Waldén it was said that Mr Liedes was hired to ‘help find solutions’, but that Mr Still, who was the rapporteur, would be responsible for the changes that Mr Liedes was pushing for.

The proposal proposes to amend the Copyright Act and Section 184 of the Electronic Communications Services Act.

EU

Telecommunications companies The concern stems from a dispute over whether broadcasters can acquire the rights to cable distribution of programs directly from copyright holders or whether, in addition, the rights to the same cable distribution must be re-acquired from the copyright association Kopiosto.

This is an additional tens of millions of annual compensation that would likely be passed on to subscribers and condominiums.

The matter has been disputed for years in a legal dispute between Kopiosto and Telia. In 2019, the Market Court ruled that Telia would not have to pay a separate additional fee for the distribution of Finnish free-to-air TV channels on the cable and iptv network. The decision is not final, as the case is now before the Supreme Court.

Yucca In the dispute pending, Liedes has written an expert opinion in favor of Kopiosto, which Kopiosto has also submitted to the Supreme Court.

However, this does not prevent him from drafting a law, nor is he a civil servant responsible for a legislative project as a consultant.

Ficom, an organization representing the interests of the information technology industry and telecommunications companies, sees Liedes as having a strong profile as a guardian of the interests of copyright organizations and authors.

While serving as OKM’s Director of Copyright, Liedes received a second Deputy Ombudsman from Parliament. From Jukka Lindstedt note in 2005 in preparation for the so-called Lex Karpela.

The then Minister of Culture Tanja Karpelan The law was a reform of the Finnish Copyright and Criminal Code.

Liedes had been a member of the boards of the Performing Arts Promotion Center (ESEK) and the Audiovisual Culture Promotion Center (AVEK), which operated under Gramex at the time.

“Such a situation has not been able to maintain public confidence in the impartiality of the service,” Deputy Ombudsman Lindstedt said at the time in his ruling.

According to the HS, the officials who prepared the implementation of the Directive would not have wanted a consultant to direct their work.

Copyright Directive In its application to Finnish law, it is simply a matter of coordinating the rights of three different parties – users, service providers and authors.

The task of the officials would be to make legislation as clear as possible, which takes into account the rights of all Finns, people and companies, and to reconcile them with the best interests of the homeland in mind.

In the digital age a key copyright issue is, for example, whether citizens are provided with effective remedies for alleged copyright infringements.

When laws are made on these matters, it would be important that the interests of consumers and users of services are also taken into account.

The reason is simple.

Consumers and network users do not have the same advocacy mechanisms and resources to pursue their interests as the content industry and copyright organizations.

Copyright Advisor Viveca Still is silent about events.

He says the ministry’s management made the decision to hire a consultant after the bill’s statement period had expired.

“For my part, I felt that, for various reasons, I was no longer in a position to continue the preparation. However, I don’t want to go into more detail in public, ”Still says.

After the incident, Still moved to work for the Treasury Department.

When Viveca Still, the main draftsman of the original bill, withdrew from the project, a new councilor was appointed Anna Vuopala.

Vuopala has worked for a long time in the Ministry of Education and Culture, but he was not involved in the working group preparing the partial reform of the Copyright Act set up in the summer of 2019 and did not participate in the negotiation phase of the directive.

Ficomin managing director Elina Ussa says that the bill, which has been open for years, has changed completely since the drafting of the bill has taken a new turn.

According to Ussa, 50 pages were removed from the original bill after the appointment of Liedes.

Ficom hopes the minister will decide to resubmit the bill for statements so that those who disagree have a better say.

Teaching- and the bill of the Ministry of Culture was under consideration by the Legislative Review Council. Council insists in its statementthat the impact of the draft copyright law on the various target groups needs to be clarified.

“The draft proposal does not assess the impact of the proposal on the various target groups in a sufficiently consistent and targeted manner, and it is not clear from the draft proposal who the key target groups are for the proposal,” the evaluation board stated.

Helsinki According to the information collected by the messages, the Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Education Anita Lehikoinen and the general manager Riitta Kaivosoja considered the recruitment of Jukka Liedes to be largely “given”. The management had apparently also realized that the creative industry had hoped to appoint Liedes to the position.

The Minister of Science and Culture, Antti Kurvinen, tells HS that he was not interested in who wanted to recruit Liedes.

“I wanted to solve the problem brought to the table and get the presentation ready soon.”

Kurvinen reminds that “everything in the ministry is political,” and so was the finalization of the presentation.

Kurvinen says that after receiving the feedback from the creative industry, he decided and also outlined that the position of authors and rightholders in the bill should be improved.

According to Kurvinen, Liedes, who retired from OKM, was known to be skilled and suitable for a demanding task.

In the final stages of the draft proposal, it was also decided that the proposal would focus only on the points required by the Directive and that any further regulation would be left to a later date.

In the future as Minister of Agriculture, Kurvinen compares the position of artists to “primary producers” who receive little compensation for their work.

“No farmers, no food. Well artist, no art, ”Kurvinen says.

Kurvinen says that with these prospects, there is no presentation of a proposal for a new round of statements, even if some parties would like to do so.

Yucca Liedes disputes the bias of Ficom’s argument against the telecommunications companies. He says he was hired with an expert contract to assist with all stages of the law change and, in particular, to evaluate feedback on the statement.

“It was by no means a question of me being responsible. I evaluated the statements and was tasked with looking at how they differed from the government’s draft proposal. I did not make the evaluations alone, but each solution involved expert officials, ”says Liedes.

According to Liedes, his statement in favor of Kopiosto in the Kopiosto – Telia dispute does not affect his position in the legislative work. Liedes says he wrote the statement three years ago at the request of a lawyer.

“The opinion was a legal assessment of the matter. I was not left with any commitments and I would have written a similar statement to anyone. ”

Liedes says he sees no bias in his actions toward copyright organizations.

“It’s not about organizations. The opinion has, of course, been requested by a lawyer who has advocated for one of the organizations. ‘

In addition, Liedes considers that sufficient time has elapsed since the statement in favor of Kopiost was written.

“At the same time, of course, I couldn’t have done that kind of work and written statements that were in any way related to each other,” Liedes says.

Administrative Court professor Olli Mäenpää The University of Helsinki says that auxiliary forces may be needed for the final meters of law drafting, if the law drafting has not been good, for example, Mäenpää says.

“But if you try to push a certain point of view into the law, then it’s problematic and a little worrying.”

Mäenpää reminds that the rules on disqualification do not apply to the preparation of legislation.

“Yet general legal principles require that the preparation be equitable and, in an essential way, that the preparation be impartial.”

“This requirement is reinforced in the case of a project for the allocation of financial resources, which is apparently the case here.”