Member States must also provide "adequate legal protection" against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement, or possession "for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which": In the absence of rightsholders taking voluntary measures the Directive provides that Member States must ensure that technological measures do not prevent uses permitted under Article 5 on copyright exceptions, see Article 6(4).

Article 7 requires that Member States must provide "adequate legal protection" against the removal of rights management information metadata.

Under the DMCA, potential users who want to avail themselves of an alleged fair use privilege to crack copy protection (which is not prohibited) would have to do it themselves since no equipment would lawfully be marketed for that purpose.

The remaining eight Member States (Belgium, Spain, France, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal, Finland and Sweden) were referred to the European Court of Justice for non-implementation.

The first, aimed at social media companies, sought to make automated screening for copyrighted content mandatory for all cases in which a user can upload data.

[8] Responding to criticism, Axel Voss admitted that the law was "maybe not the best idea" but went on to support its passage and draft some of the language being used to amend Article 11.

Its critics include German former MEP Felix Reda, Internet company Mozilla and copyright reform activists associated with the Creative Commons.