On 28 January, the European Parliament’s JURI Committee will vote on MEP Axel Voss’s own-initiative report regarding ‘Copyright and Generative Artificial Intelligence’. While the report is framed as a response to the challenges of the AI era, it suffers from fundamental flaws that threaten to undermine European innovation and legal stability.

The Coalition for Creativity (C4C) joins other digital rights advocates, such as COMMUNIA, in calling on MEPs to reject the report. Here is why this proposal, in its current form, is a step backwards for the European digital single market.

The Fundamental Flaws in the Report

1. A Conflict with the AI Act

The report introduces transparency requirements that are technically impracticable and go far beyond the hard-fought compromise of the EU AI Act. It calls for “full transparency,” including itemised lists of every individual piece of copyright-protected content used for training and detailed records of all crawling activities.

Because large-scale models are trained on vast, heterogeneous datasets, generating such lists is practically impossible. These obligations would cripple European developers with compliance costs and technical complexity while foreign competitors operate without such burdens.

2. Creating “Ambiguity” Where None Exists

The report rests on the claim that there are “ambiguities” regarding how Text and Data Mining (TDM) exceptions apply to AI training. This is a move away from the original draft’s even more extreme position—that training fell entirely outside the copyright framework—but it remains problematic.

In reality, the European Commission has repeatedly confirmed that the existing TDM framework is the cornerstone for AI development in Europe. Reopening this settled law creates unnecessary market instability and harms researchers and developers of public-interest AI.

3. Unjustified Copyright Privileges for Media Content

One of the most concerning additions to the text is a call to grant press and news media rightsholders “full control” over the use of their content for AI training and downstream uses.

This would effectively remove press content from the scope of TDM exceptions by requiring “explicit consent” for use. There is no legal justification for elevating media content to a privileged status above all other copyrighted works, and there is a clear risk that such a move would threaten the preservation of our media memory for future generations.

4. Copyright Overreach

The report attempts to use copyright law as a “Swiss Army knife” to solve unrelated issues, such as deepfakes and privacy concerns. Copyright is a tool for protecting expression and rewarding creativity; it is not the appropriate regulatory mechanism for addressing personality rights or misinformation.

The Path Forward

The TDM exceptions are a vital part of the EU acquis that enables European innovation. By attempting to “gold-plate” the AI Act and fragment the copyright framework, this report undermines the EU’s goals for digital sovereignty and competitiveness.

This is why we have urged the JURI Committee to reject the report and ensure that European AI policy remains grounded in technical and legal reality.