 this morning that perhaps doesn't get the headlines here in Ireland as much as it perhaps should. However, it's a very symbolic issue in terms of the issues around elections that are recently held both in the UK and the US. It is something of a badly ground issue. It's a question of that has come up in Younger's speech last week, the week before, in relation to the role of the European Union and the danger of the European Union creeping into areas and beyond areas of where there is a citizen appetite for reform. And what we will perhaps hear during this course of today's debate, some of these issues, explores. But before we begin, I want to introduce Ann Rooney, who is the head of public policy and government relations, EMEA, of Google. And Google are very kindly and generously sponsoring this event this morning. So Ann. My name is Ann Rooney. I look after public policy and government relations in our EMEA HQ, just down the road on Barra Street. So for those of you who don't know, Google employs about 6,000 people in Ireland. And the functions that we have down there range from sales support for small and medium businesses across the EMEA region. We've got just under 500 engineers whose role it is to keep the lights on, as we say, when it comes to Gmail, Maps, and YouTube. We also have hundreds of people working on what we call our trust and safety team. So they are responsible for reaching out to schools and keeping kids safe online and helping parents understand how to keep their kids safe online. And we also have a large team who look after our account management strategies and support for our publishers, partners. So we have a number of colleagues here this morning from that team. And I'm happy to pick up conversations with you afterwards on that. So from a public policy point of view, one of the most important issues that I work on with teams in Dublin and across Europe is the copyright proposals. And it's against that backdrop that Google is delighted to sponsor this event today. As a foundation member of the Institute, we value its role in shaping and informing conversations on key issues. Among all sectors of society, including government, business, civil society, the media, and academia. So we particularly value the Institute's work on digital and technology issues, helping to raise the profile and deepen consideration of some of the policy debates that are not only going to shape Ireland's positioning on these points, but also the European agenda. And I think today's discussion is a great example of a debate of real consequence. Not just for any individual sector, but for society as a whole. So the Institute has assembled a great lineup of speakers to address the topic. Catherine Stiler, as vice-chair of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee in the parliament, has been an active player in the debate about copyright reform at a European level. As a rapporteur on the copyright file, she has dived deeply into all of the issues and has been exposed to the arguments put forward on behalf of the various interests to this discussion. So I'm really looking forward to hearing Catherine's remarks on these issues. Catherine's going to be joined by two excellent speakers from the world of publishing. Robert Pitt and Adrienne Acosta. Robert from Independent News and Media, and Adrienne from TheJournal.ie. So I think it's going to be a great conversation this morning. I'm not going to go on in too much detail in terms of Google's role in this particular issue, just to say that we work to partner with publishers every day and Google's heavily invested in supporting high-quality journalism through technology and innovation. We do this through three pillars that you may hear referred to as the Digital News Initiative, or DNI. These pillars are product development, research and training, and the Innovation Fund. So very briefly on product development, our product and engineering team is engaged in detailed thinking with groups of publishers. We've updated Google Trends, so it's more comprehensive, faster, and deeper. And the open-sourced project Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, is seeing great traction with publishers. We've also launched Project Shield, a free tool for publishers to help fend off DDoS attacks and introduce to YouTube player for publishers a dedicated player for the industry. On the research and training side, I'm not going to go down the road of too many numbers and figures this morning. Just one of the ones that jumps out is over 20,000 European journalists have been trained in digital skills in 2016 alone. And lastly, on the Innovation Fund, the one I think that perhaps jumps out in people's mind most is the one where we launched in 2015, a fund of 150 million euro to stimulate innovation in digital journalism in Europe. In 2016, we distributed two tranches of funding for a total of 51 million to just over 250 projects in 25 European countries. In Ireland, the Innovation Fund is currently supporting projects by RTE, by the Irish Times, as well as individual researchers and startups. And I should mention that the fourth round of funding is now open for applications until the 12th of October. So it's against this backdrop, both in terms of the Irish and MHQ and that summary of our policy priority and our work with publishers that we're so delighted to be here this morning to sponsor this event. So I'll hand over to the meat of the discussion. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you, Ann, and thank you for that introduction and for your support from the Institute. Really appreciate it. So to introduce our keynote speaker, Catherine Stiler, she is that endangered species of British MEP. Catherine has been an MEP since 1999, elected on four occasions, and is now Vice-Chair of the Internal Market Committee. And she has been very, very much lobbied, I think, quite strongly. And we will hear her perspectives on the EU Copyright Directive. So Catherine, thank you very much. We talk about EU Copyright Reform and the ongoing debate. And it's fair to say that Copyright has dominated my work since I was re-elected to serve Scotland in 2014 and became the Vice-Chair of the Internal Market Committee. But I thought, just to give you a little bit about my personal copyright journey, how did I get involved in thinking about copyright? And really started in 2012, where I began to look at the subject of e-book access in public libraries in Scotland. If libraries want to survive the digital revolution, they need to offer their customers access to literature in a digital format. So, and as you can see on my little slide, that I also happen to live in Dunfermline, where it's the birthplace of Andrew Carnegie, the UK Trust is there, but also interestingly, it's where the very first Carnegie Library was situated. So this issue about libraries and thinking about how libraries offered e-books, many libraries were denied offering the same physical book in an e-book format to citizens and why, because publishers refused, or if they were going to offer, the price was overtly prohibitive at a time where library budgets were being slashed. So there's a situation where, if we want to have a knowledge-based economy, we want lifelong learning, what knowledge to be accessible, the very organisation which could deliver this, a public library, was being denied delivering a service to the public which they were demanding. So it just got me more and more interested. I'll go through some of the other things, but if I kind of go to this picture, which is kind of unusual, but anyway, I'm going to tell you what this is about. But in 1907, libraries weren't what we would think of as a library. You couldn't choose your book. You had to, and I can't kind of, I wish I could put this up a bit, but what happened was that you would go to the librarian and they would choose the book for you. And what interests me about this was that, why are we going back to 1907, where you're being denied access to things that we really want to have access to? And I'll reflect on that a little bit as we talk, but how can this digital revolution, we'd be going back in time and not progressing forward? The same could be seen in e-book access and interoperability, where consumers would not access something to something they'd actually paid for. But I want to tell you just briefly a little story about one local authority, which I discovered in my journey about e-book access and public libraries and my open knowledge campaign. I wrote to all local authorities to find out which local authority was offering the best e-book service in Scotland. And I was absolutely unfounded to find out that of all the local authorities in Scotland, there was one which wasn't just leading in Scotland and the UK, but could possibly have been leading in the whole of the European Union about digital access, e-book access, to its public library offer. And that local authority at that moment was Weston and Bartonshire. I don't know if any of you know Weston and Bartonshire, but of all the local authorities in Scotland, you would think was offering an e-book access service that was revolutionary. It was Weston and Bartonshire. And why? Because the librarian was an IT specialist, saw the importance and wanted to deliver for their customers. So I thought that was fascinating, but then when reflecting on that, there was one large local authority not far from Weston and Bartonshire in one of its public libraries that if you even wanted internet access as a local kid wanting to access books, you were told to go to the local McDonald's. So how on one hand you could have revolutionary e-book access on one hand but being told by the library service to go to the local McDonald's? So that drove me, as I say, to find, to find the open knowledge campaign led to my interest in inclusion and the issue about how we promote the vital work of public libraries. So today we have in the European Parliament a library lovers intergroup, which I lead. And next month, our successful Generation Code Week events will again be held in the European Parliament between October the 17th and 18th. I've encouraged as many colleagues to join this all-party group and many MEPs have signed up. Although one of them, when I approached them to join the intergroup, didn't hear the word library, only heard the word lover. I quickly corrected that mistake but maybe more MEPs might have joined if they'd misheard what I said. But so all in all, it's a thanks to my desire to help public libraries in their public interest mission that I've got involved in the copyright discussions in the European Parliament. And you could say that in this, it's about the knowledge economy, interoperability, accessibility, affordability and public expectation. So what I'd like to do now is take you through where we are in this journey on copyright reform in the European context. The original European copyright law, known as the directive on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society. We never know you really use the word information society but it's known as the Infosop directive and it dates back to 2001. In fact, as you said, I was elected in 1999 and I'm one of the few MEPs that actually voted in the 2001 Infosop directive. But a lot has happened, as you are well aware of, since 2001 in the digital space and particularly in social media space, not to mention how content is now delivered through smartphones. In 2014, the European Commission announced their top 10 priorities to be developed and implemented over the course of the current five year mandate and the creation of a digital single market was one of these top 10 priorities. We then have the infamous digital single market strategy published in 2015 and the proposal set out 16 targeted actions, one of which was on European copyright law, in a bid to reduce the differences between national copyright regimes and allow for wider online access to works by users across the EU, as is stated by the Commission. The evolution as you know of digital technologies has changed the way works and other protected subject matter created, produced, distributed and exploited. So new uses have emerged as well as new actors and new business models. So in the digital environment, cross-border uses have also intensified and new opportunities for consumers to access copyright protected content have materialized. So after 15 years, we finally, in 2016, got the copyright proposal presented by the Commission in September of that year. However, much to my disappointment, the proposal fall short of the stated goal of breaking down national silos in copyright and updating rules to the digital age. Instead of recognizing our everyday practices of browsing, creating, sharing online, the proposal uses copyright to limit the power of the open internet and allows the business models of all to prevail. Despite containing a couple of good points and fair enumeration in contracts of authors and performers, and the use of out-of-commerce works by cultural heritage institutions, overall, the proposal texts from the Commission lacks ambition and vision. It harmonizes very few of the existing 20 optional exceptions and somewhat unexpectedly, introduces more provisions, for example, a new right for press publishers under what is called article living and new obligations for our online platforms under article 13. I'll go into more detail of that in a minute. But if we just show you the state of play just now, as I've said, 15 years on from the Infosolc Direct, we now have this proposal. The lead committee in the Parliament is the Legal Affairs Committee, and my own Internal Market Committee is responsible for consumer and end user rights is an associated committee on this file. So this summer, the Internal Market Committee adopted its own opinion for which I was the draft's person. So I believe there are three key aspects I'd like to just highlight to you before we have a larger discussion about publishing and digital. And those three are text and data mining. The press publishes right and what is called the so-called value gap. If I can go to text and data mining, text and data mining allows to instantly discover patterns from thousands of articles useful for medical solutions or innovative digital applications. It's even, I was at a seminar to do with 17th century early modern letters online. And the fact is that now, by putting 17th century early modern letters online, you can see for the first time who was communicating to whom, how they were communicating in a way that wasn't possible actually before we could digitalise. So it's not just about scientific innovation, it's actually about how we can understand and perceive history as well. So in terms of Europeans' research, innovation, competitiveness, we need to do more to support text and data mining and our researchers. However, the problem is that our current system for communicating research uses a print-based model in a digital age. Even though research is largely produced with public money, and if you think about how, you know, we want open access for our research that's published, we think about the European research programme, how that's about open access as well. Many publishers, many, many research is paid for by public money, and the researchers who want to share it freely, often the results are not available to those in need and are hidden behind technical, legal and financial barriers. There are actually examples of universities who have paid a lot of money to have access to publications, but then find it very difficult to be able to text and data mine to do basic research, yet they've paid to have access but are denied it. That's something I think is not right. So the artificial barriers are maintained by legacy publishers and restrict access to a small fraction of users looking at most of the world's population and preventing the use of new research techniques. So the commission's proposal is a move in the right direction when compared to today's status quo, it creates a pan-European legal certainty by introducing a mandatory exception instead of an optional one, and it covers both commercial and non-commercial research. Yet the commission proposes a too narrow exception, one public interest research organisations can do with text and data mining, and this means that if you're a citizen, a freelance data journalist or a startup, you will not be able to engage in the TDM activity that you may want to. I personally believe any person or entity with legal access should be able to engage in text and data mining activities, and this way we would help European researchers, innovators and small to medium enterprises. Unfortunately, the way the discussion's going, sadly, is that I think that it's not going the way I would like to see in terms of the openness, the transformation and the innovation that I think in Europe we need. So the discussions in this file are ongoing. The Legal Affairs Committee is looking at the text and we wait with baited breath to see what happens on that. The vote in the Legal Affairs Committee at the moment is postponed from October to November or December, but we'll wait and see what happens. If I move to the second issue, which is of interest to this audience, the press publisher's right. In my report in the Terral Market Committee, I wanted to delete article 11 altogether. It just seemed to me on a number of levels to claim that publishers have no rights is false as they already acquire exclusive rights from authors via contracts. I also think the commission did not introduce enough evidence to justify the introduction of this new right. There was no impact assessment attached to article 11 and from previous drafts it would appear that it came in at some point where we were quite surprised certainly about it and we know that a similar right was introduced in Germany and Spain, but without much success. I'm concerned as to what effect the creation of this new right could have on the market and it's very likely the addition of this right will add another layer of complexity to licensing deals. There's also no guarantee provided anywhere in the commission text that any rise and publisher renumeration would float at authors. We only have the unwritten promise by certain publishers to say that this might happen, but we shouldn't legislate based on wishful thinking. This is a very serious thing because creating a new right, I think, is unprecedented on this particular issue. So in reality the issue here relates to licensing and enforcement. The commission's answer needs to focus on licensing and enforcement rather than creating new rights. So in the initial draft produced by the Legal Affairs Committee, there was a suggestion to change the article rather than creating a new right for publishers. It proposed to instead make it easier for them to enforce the copyright of content they've published. However, since the spokesperson on this file has changed, over the summer this kind of sensible approach that I think two article 11 to see a way forward doesn't appear to be standing. And regretfully it seems that the new rapporteur is very much in favour of this creation of a new right and a new article. So again, we'll have to wait and see what happens on article 11. On the final issue of the so-called value gap on article 13, the commission basically implies in its proposal that internet platforms holding large amounts of user uploaded content should monitor user behaviour to identify and prevent copyright infringement. I firmly support the notion that creators and rights holders are to receive a fair and balanced compensation for the exploitation for their works from online service providers. However, this should be achieved without negative impacts on the digital economy or internet freedoms of consumers. If unchanged, the proposal would impose a general monitoring obligation on our citizens which is actually incompatible with the Charter of Fundamental Right. Not to mention the surveillance on this scale and the use of content recognition technology would be too costly for European startups and small platforms. Effectively, we'd be helping out big players at the same time killing off European startups. I don't think that's what we want to achieve in a digital single market strategy. So I believe that if article 13 is left unchanged, the current wording of the article would actually undermine the e-commerce directive and that is something I certainly don't want to see. So in my committee, we managed to strike a good balance in the vote. Sadly, the only thing we seem to do well in my vote, the Charter of Market Committee. But the new wording would not disrupt the existing legal framework and established case law whilst taking a technologically neutral approach making sure end users are not forgotten in this equation and that no general monitoring obligation applies. So it seems to me that the wording that we've approved in the internal market committee is being currently quite accepted by a number of the MEPs in legal affairs committee as well as the rapporteur who has said, you know, the wording is helpful and would form the basis of a compromise. So hopefully the wording will remain intact and gets adopted the way we've presented it in the internal market committee. But again, we have to wait and see. So, you know, we stand here. The parliament is making its decisions. We've got the council also looking at the issues around copyright and we at the moment have the Estonian presidency. Well, with the Estonians currently, you know, holding this presidency, I was initially optimistic about their approach to copyright. But Alarm Bells has started to ring since last year when commissioner Ansep said he was not opposed to press publishers' right. And now it seems the Estonian presidency has presented two options on the press publishers' right to the member states. The first one essentially leaves the commission proposal intact with the only real improvement being a clarification that extracts too short to constitute original thought cannot be protected. The second one, however, would make it easier for news publishers to enforce the copyright and articles they publish in case of infringement, but without introducing a special right. I sincerely hope the member states opt for the second option. In relation to Article 13, the Estonians have also presented two options. However, both options do not remove the general monitoring obligation and are technologically specific. At the moment, seven member states, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Finland, Hungary, Ireland and the Netherlands, question the legality of Article 13 and ask for legal advice from the council's legal service. In their initial assessment of the proposal, the Dutch also questioned the commission as to why the scope of the TDM exception is so narrow. So I think the fact that the Estonians are presenting several options on the Articles 11 and 13 and the fact that certain member states are questioning the legality of the provisions within the commission's proposals highlights how divided the member states are on the subject of copyright reform. So to conclude, and thank you for bearing with me because some of that is just a little bit heavy, I believe that if we don't have copyright reform, we don't have a digital single market. And if we think back to that picture, that 1907 picture of the counter and the person going to it, are we going back to that? And if so, how retrograde is that when we have an opportunity at the moment to create a truly digital single market for our citizens? And that is what they want. So we have to have courage. We don't have much time to the 2019 European elections as you rightly said, I will not be in those European elections, but we have an opportunity to transform copyright and we should really take that opportunity now. So thank you for listening.