New Article by ZeMKI Members Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach and Dr. Daria Dergacheva published in Policy & Internet Journal

The article entitled “Mandate to overblock? Understanding the impact of the European Union’s Article 17 on copyright content moderation on YouTube” presents the results of a study that examines the potential overblocking due to copyright moderation and changes in the diversity of cultural offerings on YouTube in two EU member states of comparable size and population, Germany and France.

The article assesses how the takedowns of content likely related to copyright differ in these two countries and how this may have been influenced by the increased restriction of copyright related to the implementation of Article 17 of the CDSMD. In addition, the cultural diversity of offerings by genre on YouTube was examined using Stirling’s model of diversity and using a dual diversity index. As far as the authors are aware, this is the first attempt to measure the likely changes in overblocking and possible changes in cultural diversity in the YouTube infrastructure since the new copyright rules came into force in the EU. The results show that significant differences were found between Germany and France in terms of takedowns of videos from categories susceptible to copyright moderation over the analyzed period from 2019 to 2022. The study makes a methodological contribution to the field of content moderation by reusing previously collected data to examine YouTube’s infrastructure and cultural diversity in relation to content moderation.

The study was part of the Horizon 2020 Framework Program ReCreating Europe. Policy & Internet is a Q1-indexed journal focusing on public policy, the internet and related technologies. You can read the full article here (Open Access).