Protecting Europe’s content production from US giants

ABSTRACT This article investigates and compares the changes to both the Audiovisual Media Services Directive and the Copyright Directive, through which European Union policymakers have sought to protect European content producers, mainly in the face of competition from US-based platforms. Contributing to debates about platform and content regulation, we examine the approaches taken with these two legislative changes and assess the potential for success of the most recent efforts. Ultimately, we argue that if revised as proposed the Copyright Directive runs the risk of further adding to the imbalance of power between press publishers and online platforms, and that the level playing field approach taken in the AVSMD revision is more likely to be at least somewhat effective in addressing that imbalance.