Copyright Directive Webinars

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The process of implementation of the new Copyright Directive is speeding up in various countries (see our Implementation Tracker). Therefore, COMMUNIA has decided to organize a series of webinars aimed at explaining the different provisions of the new Copyright Directive and making suggestions on what to advocate for during the implementation process of those provisions at the national level, to expand and strengthen user rights.

The Copyright Directive Webinars are aimed at local advocates and national policymakers and will be conducted by COMMUNIA members and experts that were involved in preparing our Implementation Guidelines. 

We will hold four webinars of one hour each, as follows:

  • 16/06 (Tuesday) – Press Publishers’ Right (Art. 15): Dimitar Dimitrov
  • 17/06 (Wednesday) – Text and Data Mining and Education Exceptions (Arts. 3-5): Benjamin White and Teresa Nobre
  • 23/06 (Tuesday) – Use of Content by Online Platforms (Art. 17): Teresa Nobre and Paul Keller
  • 24/06 (Wednesday) – Cultural Heritage Provisions (Arts. 6, 8-11, 14): Stephen Wyber, Ariadna Matas and Paul Keller 

All webinars will take place from 10.00am to 11.00am CET. You can register for the webinars of your choice here. Remember to register for the seminar up to 24 hours before it starts. We have a limit of 30 participants at each seminar, so please don’t register if you don’t plan to show up. The access info will be shared with those who signed up. Continue reading →

Video recording from last weeks COMMUNIA salon

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Last week Monday, on the first anniversary of the entry into force of the Copyright in the DSM Directive, we held the first virtual edition of our COMMUNIA Salon. During the event we presented an overview of the implementation status in the EU member states, zoomed in (sic!) on various legislative proposals to implement Articles 15 and 17 of the Directive and discussed ways to challenge parts of the Directive via the legal system. If you have missed the event you can watch a recording of the presentations and the subsequent discussion here: 

The event was kicked off by Teresa Nobre who launched the COMMUNIA implementation tracker and presented an overview of the implementation in the EU member states. While France has already implemented the press publishers right, the majority of EU member states are still in various stages of consultation. One year after the entry into force of the Directive, only Belgium, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands have put forward legislative proposals. Continue reading →

Our DSM Directive Implementation Tracker is out

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Today we are launching our new DSM Directive Implementation Tracker.

These tracking pages aim to provide information on the status of the implementation of the new Copyright Directive in all EU Member States. The information contained in each country page was collected by local organisations and individuals in each country and/or from public sources.

This tracker is part of a wider implementation project of COMMUNIA and its members Centrum Cyfrowe and Wikimedia, which includes a range of activities (including our DSM Directive Implementation Guidelines) to make sure that local communities in as many Member States as possible are aware of their national legislative processes and participate in those processes.  

What is the current status of the implementation?

One year after the entry into force of the DSM Directive, the implementation picture is very varied. So far only one member state (France) has adopted one element of the Directive (the new press publishers right) into national law.

There are currently two member states with implementation law proposals tabled in their national parliaments. In France a proposal implementing articles 17 – 22 of the Directive has cleared committee and is awaiting first reading in plenary. In the Netherlands a proposal implementing the entire Directive has just been introduced into parliament and is awaiting reading in the legal affairs committee.Continue reading →

New policy paper on fundamental rights as a limit to copyright during emergencies

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Adjusting essential uses to new modes of living
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Today, Communia released a policy paper on fundamental rights as a limit to copyright during emergencies. This policy paper has been prepared in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused a massive disruption of the normal organization of society in many EU countries. 

In our paper we defend that, in order to transpose education, research and other public interest activities from public locations to private homes during government-imposed lockdowns, we need to be able to rely on the understanding that fundamental rights can, in exceptional situations, function as an external limit to our national copyright systems.

The main conclusions of our paper are the following:

First Conclusion

The educational and research exceptions and limitations provided for in Article 5(3)(a) of the InfoSoc Directive and in Articles 6(2)(b) and 9(b) of the Database Directive, and the public lending exception provided for in Article 6(1) of the EU Rental and Lending Rights Directive are mandatory for Member States, due to the fundamental rights that they internalize, namely those enshrined in Articles 11(1), 13 and 14(1) of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.Continue reading →

COMMUNIA Salon: Copyright in the DSM Directive – one year after

Communia Salon 2020: DSM directive one year afterLicentie
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The Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) Directive went into effect on the 18th of May 2019. During the COMMUNIA salon we will be given an update on the implementation status in the EU member states and the discussions at the European Commission’s stakeholder dialogue on the implementation of Article 17 of the directive. Join us on Monday the 18th of May 2020 from 1530h – 1700h (Brussels time) for a series of short presentations and an informal question and answer session.

While the focus of most policy makers is on the current health emergency, the implementation of the CDSM directive is ongoing. Member states have until the 7th of June 2021 to implement the divisive and complex rules contained in the directive.

A year after the entry into force of the directive a messy picture has emerged. In France, which has already implemented the press publishers right, that implementation has led to an intervention of the competition authority. The Polish government has challenged parts of Article 17 in the CJEU arguing that it violates fundamental rights. And while some Member States have published legislative proposals for the implementation of the directive, most Member States are still holding formal and informal consultations.

Meanwhile, the Commission’s own stakeholder dialogue, which brought more than 80 different stakeholders together to discuss the implementation of Article 17, has come to a COVID19 induced halt after a series of contentious meetings, and all eyes are now on the European Commission which has yet to present a first outline of the implementation guidelines.

During the upcoming COMMUNIA salon, Teresa Nobre (COMMUNIA) will provide an overview of the implementation status in the different member states. Ula Furgal (CREATe) will provide a more in depth perspective on Article 15 (the new press publishers rights) including recent developments in France and Australia. Paul Keller (COMMUNIA) will provide an overview of the discussions surrounding the implementation of Article 17 including the ongoing stakeholder dialogue. Finally, Julia Reda (GFF /control ©) will discuss the role of litigation in ensuring a fundamental rights-preserving implementation of the CDSM directive.

The presentations will be followed by an informal question and answer session.

This event is open for everyone to attend and will be held on Zoom. In order to ensure smooth participation we request participants to register beforehand. Registered participants will receive login information ahead of the event.

A better way to implement Article 17? New German proposal to avoid overblocking

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A step-by-step concept against overblocking
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Back in April 2019, at the occasion of the final vote on the DSM Directive in the Council, the German Federal Government issued a statement, announcing that it intended to implement Article 17 with a focus on “preventing ‘upload filters’ wherever possible, ensuring freedom of expression and safeguarding user rights”. While the German Government has yet to produce an implementation proposal for Article 17, we may now have gotten a first insight in what such an implementation might look like. Late last month, the Kölner Forschungsstelle für Medienrecht at the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, published a step-by-step concept for implementing Article 17 of the DSM Directive (“Stufenkonzept gegen Overblocking durch Uploadfilter“). 

The paper authored by Prof. Dr. Rolf Schwartmann and Prof. Dr. Christian-Henner Hentsch consists of an implementation proposal in the form of concrete legislative language. The objective of the authors seems to be to stay as close as possible to the objectives formulated in the German statement to the Council. What makes this proposal remarkable is that it is the first proposal (although not an official one) for implementing the Article 17 of the new Copyright Directive that does not consist of more or less literal transposition of Article 17 into national law (as it is the case in the French, Dutch and Belgian legislative proposals). In order to achieve the stated objective of preventing over-blocking by upload filters, the concept proposes a combination of Article 17 with Article 12 of the DSM Directive (which provides Member States the option to introduce Extended Collective Licenses). 

The implementation proposal contains modifications of three different acts: the Copyright Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz – UrhG), the Tele Media Act (Telemediengesetz – TMG) and the Collective Management Organisations Act (Verwertungsgesellschaftengesetz – VGG). Specifically the authors propose the following modifications: 

In the Copyright Act, they propose to add a new section to the article (§ 19a UrhG) that defines the act of communication to the public. The purpose of this addition is to include acts of giving the public access to copyright-protected user uploaded works by Online Content Service Providers (OCSSPs) in the definition of the existing making available to the public right. This establishes that, in principle, OCSSPs need authorisation from rightholders for such acts. The added section also includes the definition of OCSSPs, which is a literal transposition of the definition used in the DSM directive. 

The second addition to the Copyright Act is a new exception covering uses for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche by users of OCSSPs (§ 51a UrhG). Notably, this exception only applies in the context of sharing works via OCSSPs (which is highly unusual as copyright exceptions are usually not limited to specific services) and is conditional on remuneration to rightholders via collective management organisations. Continue reading →

Open Letter to WIPO: Intellectual Property and COVID-19

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Public interest must prevail at time of crisis
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Today, Communia and a group of over 140 other organisations and individuals sent a letter to Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Francis Gurry, asking WIPO to ensure that intellectual property regimes support, and do not impede, efforts to both fighting the new Coronavirus outbreak and its consequences.

This diverse group representing researchers, educators, students, and the institutions that support them, acknowledges that a number of countries and some right holders have adopted exemplary measures in this context. These include measures to facilitate access to academic articles, research data, educational materials and other protected works, as well as medicines and medical devices that are subject to exclusive rights.

However, the signatories of the letter also believe that those measures alone are not enough, and that more actions are needed to ensure that the global intellectual property system prioritizes and promotes vital public interests at this critical moment.

Therefore, the signatories urge Mr. Gurry to use his position to guide the member states of WIPO and others in their response to intellectual property issues that the COVID-19 pandemic is raising, namely:

  • Encouraging all WIPO member states to take advantage of flexibilities in the international system that permit uses of intellectual property-protected works for online education, for research and experimental uses, and for vital public interests, such as access to medicine and culture;
  • Calling on all right holders to remove licensing restrictions that inhibit remote education, research (including for text and data mining and artificial intelligence projects) and access to culture, including across borders, both to help address the global pandemic, and in order to minimise the disruption caused by it;
  • Supporting the call by Costa Rica for the World Health Organization to create a global pool of rights in COVID-19 related technology and data, as well as promoting the use of the Medicines Patents Pool, voluntary licensing, intellectual property pledges, compulsory licensing, use of competition laws, and other measures to eliminate barriers to the competitive global manufacture, distribution and sale of potentially effective products to detect, prevent, and treat COVID-19.
  • Supporting countries’ rights to enact and use exceptions to trade secret and other intellectual property rights needed to facilitate greater access to manufacturing information, cell lines, confidential business information, data, software, product blueprints, manufacturing processes, and other subject matter needed to achieve universal and equitable access to COVID-19 medicines and medical technologies as soon as reasonably possible.

You can read the full letter here (PDF). You are welcome to endorse the letter here.

Update 7 April: the letter has been endorsed by more than 400 organisations and individuals in 45 countries. You can see the full list of signatories here.

Update 16 April: the letter has been endorsed by 149 organizations and 359 individuals. The listed organizations represent more than 32.5 million educators, 2.5 million libraries and archives, 45,000 museums, and 200 copyright scholars in 199 countries.

Article 17 Stakeholder dialogue: COMMUNIA input paper

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Our principles for the the Commission guidelines
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Given the ongoing health emergency, the European Commission’s stakeholder dialogue on the implementation of Article 17 of the Copyright Directive is currently suspended. The 7th meeting of the stakeholder dialogue, which was originally scheduled for Monday of this week and where the Commission was expected to “share initial views on the content of the guidelines”, has been cancelled and it is currently unclear how and when the stakeholder dialogue will be resumed. In the meanwhile, the European Commission is continuing its work on the guidelines.

While we are waiting for news on the future of the stakeholder dialogue we have produced an input paper for the Commission (pdf) that summarises our observations from the stakeholder dialogue so far and formulates a number of principles that the Commission should take into account when drafting its guidelines. In line with our initial principles, the input paper focuses on licensing, transparency and procedural safeguards for users’ rights. The paper builds on the model that we had presented during the last meeting of the stakeholder dialogue. 

Specifically, we are asking the Commission to include the following in the Article 17 implementation guidelines: 

  • Recommend to national lawmakers to fully explore all legal mechanisms (including collective licensing with extended effect, mandatory collective management schemes and other non-voluntary licensing schemes) for granting OCSSPs authorisation to have in their platforms copyright-protected works and other subject matter uploaded by their users.
  • Require that all ownership claims made in the context of the measures required by Article 17 must be made fully transparent to allow public scrutiny and prevent unjustified removals or blocking by rightholders claiming ownership of works that they do not own.
  • Require that OCSSPs publish statistical information on the number of removal/blocking actions as well as the number of complaints and the resolution of complaints arising as the result of such actions.
  • Requires that in cases other than obvious infringement and in order to prevent automated measures from affecting lawful uses, users must have the ability to override all automated actions before the blocking/removal takes effect.
  • Require that in case of obvious (“prima facie”) infringement uploaded content can be automatically blocked/removed under the condition that uploaders have the ability to easily and effectively challenge such blocks/removals.
  • Require that users must be able to rely on all existing exceptions as grounds for challenging removal/blocking actions and must be able to dispute the ownership claims on which an action is based.

Continue reading →

Copyright Directive – Implementation – March news

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We have yet to see how the pandemic will affect the calendar
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The implementation of the copyright directive is ongoing in several countries, which might be a challenge due to the pandemic (e.g. to hold face-to-face events and meetings) or an opportunity (e.g. some officers working on copyright issues might have more time to focus on it). In the meantime, several EU member states decided to ask the Commission to adjust its calendar of infringement decisions and to suspend the deadlines relating to the pending infringement procedures. We have yet to see how the pandemic will affect the calendar of ongoing implementations.

EU implementation – country updates from last month

Sweden

The Swedish Ministry of Justice recently closed the public consultation on the implementation of Articles 3 to 12 of the Copyright Directive. The Ministry shared a document containing only the opening remarks on how those Articles should be assessed and implemented (according to the officers at the ministry) and the deadline for submitting opinions on those positions ended on 20 March. The document shared by the Ministry of Justice as a part of the public consultation is not the official position of the Swedish Government. The memo serves as a starting point for discussions about the directive and includes a number of questions regarding the articles for the stakeholders involved. 

France

The French audiovisual reform, which transposes the Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) Directive, as well as Article 17 of the Copyright Directive, was subject to discussion and voting in the National Assembly’s Culture and Education (CULT) Committee, on the first week of March. The CULT Committee worked its way through 1.327 amendments to the proposal. On 5 March, the CULT Committee finalized this effort and approved the amended text. The approved text, in what concerns the implementation of Article 17, is not substantially different from the original proposal that we analyzed here. The text is now scheduled to be discussed in the Assembly’s Plenary session at the beginning of April. The relevant documents will be made available here. Continue reading →

What we hope for WIPO under new leadership: neutrality, fairness, and transparency

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Last week, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) nominated a new Director General, Daren Tang, who will assume the post on 1 October 2020. Tang is currently the Chief Executive of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore and has served as the Chair of WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) for the past six bi-annual meetings of the committee. 

A growing number of civil society organizations working on copyright reform, including Communia and its members Wikimedia and Creative Commons, participate as permanent observers in the SCCR, for the committee addresses several important issues in the field of copyright. This includes a potential new treaty for the protection of broadcasting organizations; exceptions and limitations to copyright for libraries, museums, archives, educational and research institutions, and persons with other disabilities; and the broader topic of copyright and the changing digital environment. 

WIPO has the potential to affect norm setting in a variety of topics in the field of copyright, not only those currently discussed in the SCCR, but also others that WIPO may introduce via its training and capacity-building activities. In fact, although WIPO is a member state-driven institution and only its 192 country members can decide on the adoption of binding legal instruments or soft laws, the Director General and his senior management team can influence the direction of national law and policy reforms in developing countries through the organization’s technical assistance program.

The impact of the WIPO Secretariat on the work of the copyright committee

The WIPO Secretariat also has a significant impact on the work of the SCCR. In the past year, we have witnessed that it is fairly easy to prejudge the outcomes of an Action Plan on Limitations and Exceptions adopted by the WIPO member states if the WIPO Secretariat carries out the activities foreseen in such a plan in a manner that puts an over-emphasis on the private interests of copyright owners to the detriment of the public interests related with access to knowledge and education. 

Regional events intended to identify “areas for action with respect to the limitations and exceptions regime” can easily be turned into lobbying platforms for copyright owners, if ill-designed. Would-be beneficiaries of the limitations and exceptions regime can easily be prevented from sharing their experiences in such events in a structured manner, if no formal speaking roles are given to them. Furthermore, an international conference intended to discuss limitations and exceptions for cultural heritage and educational and research institutions can be organized in such a manner that the panels are dominated by rights holders and collective management organizations, preventing a fair and balanced discussion on the issues at hand. Continue reading →