Disappointing news: Advocate General of @EUCourtPress does not recommend the annulation of #Article17. Instead, the provision must be interpreted in a fundamental rights-compliant manner to ensure that only manifestly illegal content gets blocked. A Thread.
The opinion is not a judgment. If the Court follows the AG’s recommendation, #Article17 would survive, but it would apply differently than rightsholders hoped for. Member States will have to make sure that legal content is protected from #uploadfilters.
Some Member States have already implemented #Article17 into national law. All but Germany have completely failed to put in place measures to prevent blocking of legal content. Those implementations are likely to violate the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The European Court of Justice could put an end to those violations by annulling #Article17, but this seems less likely now that the AG thinks that a fundamental rights-compliant application is possible. This means civil society has its work cut out for it:
We will need to bring all national implementations that fail to protect user rights before the courts to ensure that they comply with the fundamental rights-preserving interpretation of #Article17. This process is likely to take years.
At least the hurdles for automatic blocking proposed by the Advocate General are high. Here's the crucial part of the press release: #Article17 #uploadfilters We will know in a few months if the Court follows this interpretation. 
According to the Advocate General, no transformative uses of copyrighted content may be blocked by #uploadfilters. If the Court agrees, not even the German implementation of #Article17 with its quantitative thresholds for "minor uses" meets the requirements of the Charter.
The Advocate General does imply that the basic approach of the German implementation is correct, though. Member States should implement specific ex-ante safeguards such as quantitative thresholds and flagging. The big open question is at what point they are considered sufficient.
The full text of the Advocate General opinion on #article17 is now available in English. Happy reading! curia.europa.eu/juris/document…
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