The Effect of Digitalization on the Development of Copyright in the European Union

Abstract

Author's works in a classical, analogous form, through the development of digitization, leave the markets to acts in digital form. The European Union (EU) market is no longer just a single (internal) market, it is also becoming a single digital market. With the development of technology, copyright is also developing. Existing national laws as well as EU regulations can hardly adequately follow these changes. In this sense, several secondary regulations were adopted in the EU and the last was adopted in May 2019. Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 May 2019 on copyright and related rights in a single digital market and amending the Directive 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC. The subject of this paper will be the analysis of EU regulations related to the development of copyright and related rights in order to adapt them to the digital environment. An analysis of EU regulations should give us an answer to the question of whether copyright law in the EU has been developed at a level that can track digitization and its accompanying phenomena.