Collaboration between information society service providers and rightholders is essential for the functioning of the measures, such as content recognition technologies. These measures should be applied with regard to works and other subject-matter identified by rightholders at the request of such rightholders and in cooperation with them.
In particular, the rightholders should provide the necessary data on works and other subjectmatter. The data should be provided by rightholders in a format allowing the service providers to apply the measures in an effective manner to the specific works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders.
Service providers should be transparent towards rightholders with regard to the deployed measures, to allow the assessment of their appropriateness. As different measures may be used by service providers, they should provide rightholders with appropriate information on the type of measures used and the way they are operated.
Where relevant, notably where agreements have been concluded with rightholders for the use of the protected content, the service providers should also provide information on the success rates for the recognition of rightholders’ content, without prejudice to their business secrets.
The level of information given by the service providers should as a minimum be sufficient to allow rightholders to assess the effectiveness of the measures used without requiring the service providers to provide them with detailed and individualised information for each content identified. This is without prejudice to contractual arrangements, which may contain more specific provisions on the information to be provided.
In order to facilitate the assessment by the service providers of what could constitute appropriate and proportionate measures, collaboration between rightholders and service providers is to be encouraged by the Member States in view of defining best practices.
The measures taken by the service providers should respect the freedom of expression and freedom to information of their users and be without prejudice to the application of the exceptions and limitations to copyright.
For that purpose the service providers should put in place mechanisms allowing users to complain about the blocking or removal of uploaded content that could benefit from an exception or limitation to copyright. Replies to the users’ complaints should be provided in a timely manner. To make these mechanisms function, cooperation from rightholders is needed, in particular with regard to the assessment of the complaints submitted.