Contracts on Digital Content in Europe: Balancing between ­Author-Protective Copyright Policies and Consumer Policies

The online distribution of digital content is generally based on a chain of contractual relationships that can frequently consist of an upstream relationship between an author and a supplier, and a downstream relationship between the supplier and the consumer. Protected digital content transactions are thus potentially subject to two distinct sets of rules, i.e. copyright and consumer protection rules. Consequently, it is important to ensure consistency between the legal instruments that apply to these different contractual relationships, to avoid a «clash of cultures». Against this background, this article discusses two recent EU proposals on the supply of digital content and on copyright in the Digital Single Market, respectively. It presents the proposed instruments and their interactions in the multi-component digital contractual ecosystem and argues that a holistic approach is necessary to ensure consistency between the relevant regulatory regimes and to avoid a situation where…