Abstract

In May 2015 the European Commission defined a "Strategy" for the Digital Single Market. This paper sketches an initial analysis of the "Strategy" 's main priorities for copyright, tackling the role and influence of the large distribution platforms. The paper highlights the territorial nature of intellectual property rights as a tool for market organisation (and a means of awarding royalties), something the supporters of its cultural field tend to forget when they stress the importance of cultural or social regulation. It also indicates what the Commission reasserts (there being no European copyright) making - or failing to make - choices about cross-border transferability, private copying, user-generated content (no via YouTube but yes to data mining, which had previously been regulated by the "Licences for Europe" initiative), etc. The final part addresses what is not treated in the "Strategy": the culturally prescriptive role of search engines or algorithms «that turn search engines into giants and content producers into dwarves».