The Center of the Picture Industry (CEPIC) participated in the first market test with an answer on 27 May 2013. We expressed our concerns about GOOGLE’s extensive unauthorized use of third parties’ content in the area of images and explained why, in our view, the proposals did nothing to bring this identified abuse of GOOGLE’s overwhelmingly dominant position to an end.
GENERAL COMMENTS
- Given that GOOGLE’s offer of remedies of 21 October 2013 is based on the same principles which underpin Google’s offer of remedies of
3 April 2013, and that these principles were flawed, GOOGLE’s offer of remedies of 21 October 2013 is equally flawed.
- GOOGLE has only proposed remedies for text, leading to a situation where, for example, text would be protected in a user‐generated review but not images.
- We do not see that the new revised proposals by GOOGLE meet the minimum criteria set in our previous answer to the market test:
‐ Meet the requirements of all content providers ‐ Work out in the future and adapt to the evolution of technologies and business models as pointed out by GOOGLE
- Regarding the display and use of content (new B), we do not see any major improvement.
In our original answer of May 2013, we criticized the “Notice Form” as old fashioned and unworthy of a technology savvy company such as GOOGLE in view of existing rights expression languages such as those developed by IPTC.
In view of all the above, CEPIC has been compelled to submit its own complaint to the European Commission on 8 November 2013 outlining its concerns and solutions in a detailed way. The complaint is supported by an unprecedented coalition of trade associations representing thousands of photographers in the two main geographical areas for photography: Europe and the United States.
