The purpose of the European Commission’s consultation was to gather the information needed to review the “2019 Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.”
And, in addition, to gather feedback on the challenges associated in particular with the enforcement of copyright and related rights in the context of technological developments, as well as on possible solutions.
Both the Authors' Rights Initiative and 431 other organizations responded to the call and issued statements.
Click here to view the feedback submitted by the Authors' Rights Initiative in English (also available as a PDF below).
Here is an extract:
The umbrella organisation Initiative Urheberrecht represents the interests of authors and performers in Germany. It brings together 44 member organisations representing more than 140,000 creators and performing artists across the full range of creative professions, including, central to this submission, illustrators, photographers, translators, journalists, composers and performers. We welcome the opportunity to contribute to this Call for Evidence, which we understand to serve both the review of the CDSM Directive under Article 30 and the preparation of a further targeted legislative initiative expected in Q1/2027. Initiative Urheberrecht has already submitted a separate, detailed response to the Commission's consultation on the evaluation of the CDSM Directive, addressing especially the implementation of Articles 18 to 23 across Member States. This submission is complementary. It focuses on the question of what a targeted legislative initiative on copyright and generative AI should contain, drawing in particular on the specific exposure of visual and text creators, specifically journalists, music creators and other creative professions. Where relevant, we also draw on the evaluation findings to show why contractual mechanisms alone cannot resolve the problems we describe.
Conclusion
Authors and performers across illustration, photography, translation, journalism, film and music face converging but distinct harms from the current generation of generative AI systems, and the existing EU copyright framework, including the DSM Directive's TDM exceptions and the AI Act's transparency provisions has not been sufficient to secure either meaningful control over, or fair remuneration for, the use of their works. The ongoing German proceedings in Kneschke v. LAION demonstrate concretely how the boundary between the research and commercial TDM exceptions can be eroded through structuring choices that the legislator did not anticipate, while the contrasting outcome in GEMA v. OpenAI shows that national courts are not converging on a stable answer. We urge the Commission to use the targeted legislative initiative to:
clarify the scope and interaction of the Article 3 and Article 4 TDM exceptions in the generative AI context
introduce a remuneration systems covering both the input (training) and output use, structured to preserve individual opt-out rather than displacing it through an ECL-style mechanism;
make transparency obligations effective and actionable;
and introduce standalone protection against AI impersonification of performers.
Initiative Urheberrecht and its member organisations remain available to provide further evidence, including sector-specific data, as the Commission's impact assessment proceeds.