The European Commission’s copyright reforms fail to meet 21st century needs and fall short of President Jean-Claude Juncker’s own ambition, according to a group of influential industry insiders.

Representatives from media and technology companies, academics and politicians who make up POLITICO’s Copyright Caucus heavily criticized the proposed changes, with four-fifths describing them as “unfit for the 21st century.”

The proposed reforms, which follow 15 years of bitter disputes about copyright regulation as new technologies have disrupted established protections for intellectual property, aim to protect publishers, empower artists and increase access to video-on-demand. In his State of the Union address in September, Juncker positioned the proposals as a “key part” of the Commission’s plans for a digital single market, which aims to pump €415 billion into Europe’s economy annually by removing digital barriers across the EU.

The European Parliament is currently deciding which MEP will be in charge of the file. Sources told POLITICO that Therese Comodini Cachia, a Maltese member of the European People’s Party, is likely to be announced in the role this week.

One of the 37 experts who make up the Caucus said the Commission’s plans revealed “a lowest common denominator approach and without real regard of technological developments.” Another described the plans as “backward looking, preserving one single sector at the expense of potential new source of value.”

However, others said the plans were “a good start” and saw them as an “evolution” of the current system. All participants contributed on the basis that they be quoted anonymously.

The group, which included Sweden’s ambassador to the EU, representatives from Google and 21st Century Fox, as well as politicians and NGOs, thought media publishers were the big winners so far, with almost two-thirds ranking this group as most likely to benefit thanks to plans to let them charge internet platforms like Google for showing extracts of their articles.

So-called ancillary copyright is one way media companies — including Axel Springer, part-owner of POLITICO Europe — have argued they should be protected from news aggregators showing snippets of copyrighted material, for example on search results pages. Such snippets may stop people clicking on the link and visiting the publishers’ own website, they argue, thereby preventing content creators from making money from their work.

Numerous Caucus members, however, said that similar efforts in Germany (where few significant profits have been made through the measure and few publishers seek to use it) and Spain (where aggregators were forced to pay for showing links, leading Google to remove its News service and an overall drop in traffic to news sites) — were “obvious failures.”

Fewer than one in five thought the proposals offered a sustainable solution for publishers’ business models.

“Search engines and publishers operate in a symbiotic relationship,” one said. “Without search engines to direct users toward content, publishers lose readers and revenue, and without publishers the search engines have no links. Instead of resolving an injustice, such a levy fails to provide economic beneﬁts for either party.”

Participants also expressed concern that the proposals will be particularly bad for small publishers. One said: “Big publishers and big search engine businesses negotiate licensing deals, leaving smaller publishers out of the loop, potentially with search engines refusing to link to them, and losing out on traffic and readership.” The same Caucus member warned, “when we see a reduction in links due to court cases and legal uncertainty, it will be European citizens who will lose out on access to knowledge, information and culture.”

While ancillary copyright was the most controversial component of the package, the Caucus was also split on many other elements of the plans.

Under the Commission proposal, internet platforms like Facebook “will now become liable for the content uploaded by their users,” cautioned one, “whereas it’s simply impossible to monitor this content.”

Some feared the text and data mining exception to lift copyright restrictions for educational establishments was too narrow, and would harm innovation.

On the other hand, a majority of Caucus participants welcome measures designed to give performers more power to negotiate with online platforms, like YouTube, that showcase their work.

One participant called it “a good first step to ensure that songwriters and composers are treated more fairly by publishers and producers.” And another labeled it “the only measure that seeks to directly help artists rather than their employers.”

However, a third said “it does nothing to help younger artists outside the major label system.” Those artists are unlikely to have the collective power to negotiate higher rates of compensation for their work being played.

And then there is freedom of panorama — the concept by which in countries including France, Denmark and Italy, people technically must seek permission before sharing or selling their photographs of copyright-protected buildings, such as the Colosseum and the lights on the Eiffel Tower at night. Pressure from Paris stopped the Commission from taking action to introduce a copyright exception for public buildings this time around, but the Caucus was divided over the importance of the issue.

“I’m a citizen of Europe, any public building belongs to me,” said one of the vast majority who said the current arrangements are wrong. “This smacks of Soviet-style totalitarianism.”

But one Caucus member said the panorama exception is “a political [red] herring, irrelevant to most people,” except, said another, social media platforms who have taken up the cause because they “want to be in full control of photos posted by individuals.”

Most experts tipped the process to be completed either by the second half of next year or following the end of the current Commission in 2019.

The day after Juncker’s State of the Union speech last month, the European Court of Justice upheld that companies offering free public Wi-Fi may be compelled to prevent pirated content being downloaded on their networks by checking each user’s identity.

According to one participant: “Cases like this one make it clear that Europe cannot get out of the stone age without addressing the tremendous overreach of digital copyright law.”

Click here to see a list of all participants.

Chris Spillane and Arnau Busquets Guàrdia contributed to this report.