Anyone can express a view of the bill. Please send your opinion by the consultation deadline (15.09.2023) to:
Rechtsetzungnot shown@ipito make life hard for spam bots.ch

Once the consultation deadline has passed, the IPI will assess the opinions it has received. It will publish a report on the results and the opinions.

Based on this assessment, the Federal Council will decide how to proceed. If the Federal Council wishes to continue the project, the bill will be revised to take account of the results from the consultation. The next step in the legislative process is the referral of the bill to Parliament. You can find more information about the legislative process in Switzerland here (in German).

AI-generated replies are not yet able to replace snippets, so AI doesn’t make the bill obsolete. The bill must be critically examined in view of technical developments, however, and amended if necessary.

That’s correct. At least in theory. In practice, media companies only manage to monetise this greater reach to a limited extent. Ultimately, advertising revenues still go primarily to large online platforms. That’s not because of the snippets. Instead, it’s due to the online platforms’ superior business model in the area of advertising.

No, quoting will still be possible. Today, the right to quote allows the use of copyright-protected parts of works as an explanation, a reference or an illustration, provided that the size of the quotation is justified by its purpose. That won’t change.

The Copyright Act permits the use of brief excerpts from press articles, radio reports and television reports in the interest of freedom of information. This copyright exception for reporting on current events doesn’t entail any remuneration under current legislation. Retaining this exception without any changes would lead to the unsatisfactory situation whereby remuneration would be payable on the use of snippets not subject to copyright but not on longer, copyright-protected snippets.

To preserve freedom of information, the current copyright exception will remain in place. However, service providers obliged to pay remuneration in accordance with the related right for press publishers will also have to pay remuneration on this copyright exception. Large online platforms will thus no longer be able to run a news page with content from various media companies unless they remunerate the media companies appropriately or restrict their news offering to links.

No, assuming that making content available constitutes copying is a misinterpretation based on a false understanding of collective rights management organisations’ right to remuneration. Collective rights management organisations don’t collect remuneration solely for photocopying. They also take action whenever individual rights management isn’t possible or feasible, as in the case in hand.

This isn’t about state promotion of the media. Private parties will be liable to pay remuneration – not the state. The intervention aims to improve the position of the media in the interest of the public, however, so the planned regulation would have the same effect as media promotion. Yet, rejecting the package of measures in favour of the media wouldn’t constitute a general rejection of all legislative activities in favour of a functioning media landscape.