Licentieall rights reservedDavid Ramírez-OrdóñezIn our capacity of permanent observers of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, we are attending the 35th session of the Committee, which is taking place in Geneva from 13 to 17 November 2017.
The following is the statement made by Teresa Nobre on our behalf on agenda item 7: Limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities.
This post is based on the talk Anna gave during CopyCamp 2017 “Paradigm Lost? How Our Freedoms are Weaponized Against Us and What We Can Do About It”. A video of the talk is available here.
How do you lobby for a great copyright in the post-political world? With difficulty, since it is also a post-factual world: politicians seem to care more about marketing than evidence. Perhaps when the facts are not important we should then look for a better propaganda?
This “better propaganda” should not be populist or based on lies. Digital rights organizations need a better, compelling narrative to convince people to care more. We need to test new approaches because European citizens do not realize that they are bound by the copyright framework every time they access news, knowledge or entertainment on the internet.
We also need to find more compelling ways to talk about rights in the digital environment because these days everybody is a creator and the only difference is that some of us identify as such and many of us don’t. Those of us who don’t, also don’t think that our small acts of creativity such as memes or photos we post online are serious enough to give us this status, but this does not change the fact that we are indeed creators.
In both cases creativity is crucial for self-expression, and self-expression is key to one’s identity. Today all three: creativity, self-expression and identity become market commodities, increasingly so via social media. So what happens when they enter the market?
Last Wednesday, June 21st, COMMUNIA organised an event in the European Parliament, hosted by MEP Marietje Schaake (ALDE) on copyright reform for education. We wanted to share one important voice often overlooked in the copyright reform, that of the educator. What is the type of copyright exception that we need to support 21st century education? We heard from practitioners, experts and policymakers during the event.
After an introduction by Marietje Schaake and moderator Lisette Kalshoven, we officially presented the results of the RIGHTCOPYRIGHT campaign to MEP Schaake. As Alek Tarkowski noted:
“In the copyright reform debate, we tend to see copyright as a core issue. For educators, copyright is a tool – or a barrier – to attaining educational goals. We should not forget this.”
Over 4800 people have supported the petition for a better copyright reform for education to date, and we hope MEP’s will listen to their demands.
Next we heard from Hans deFour, founder of KlasCement a very successful online educational resources platform in Belgium. More than 70.000 educators from Flanders are members, which means almost 50% of educators in primary, secondary and special education. Continue reading
One of the issues that has been glaringly absent from the Commission’s proposal for Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive is better protection of the Public Domain from Cultural Heritage Institutions who are trying to appropriate Public Domain works that they have digitized.
Most of Europe’s Museums, Libraries and Archives digitize Public Domain works in their collection in order to make them available without any restrictions (in line with our Public Domain Manifesto and Europeana’s Public Domain Charter). However, a minority of institutions uses loopholes in copyright legislation to claim exclusive rights over digital reproductions of works for which copyright protection has expired.
The legal basis for such claims is often found in copyright rules that also afford some form of protection to non-original photographs. These are photographic reproductions that qualify for copyright protection because they do not constitute the “own intellectual creation” of the author. Such loopholes exist in 7 EU member states and the proposed DSM directive would have been an opportunity to close them. Continue reading
Later this week in Toronto we’ll be joining hundreds of Creative Commons community members, supporters, and activists at the CC Global Summit. The summit program will feature keynotes and a variety of sessions organized around five tracks, including Policy & Advocacy, the Useable Commons, Community & Movement, Spheres of Open, and the Future of the Commons.
We’ll be joining many of the sessions, especially in the Policy & Advocacy track. As Lisette explained last week, the Policy & Advocacy track will focus on sharing information about our work in support of copyright reform and commons advocacy, and increasing the effectiveness of our community in the current and future hotbeds of law and policy change. These are exactly the areas in which COMMUNIA has been working since the summer of 2014, when we rebooted as an advocacy team to respond to the then-upcoming reform of the EU copyright rules. We know that other governments around the world are engaged in (or planning) updates to rules that govern the creation and sharing of creativity and knowledge. Some of these changes acknowledge the importance of user rights in the digital and online world, but many of the proposals only call for an increase in protection and enforcement of copyright that benefits powerful rights holders and content publishers.
In Communia Association we are well aware of challenges which copyright reform brought for the whole movement of activists actively engaged in copyright debate. Currently we’re facing the Commission’s proposal that restricts access to information, internet freedoms and threaten digital economy. Moreover, the voice of civil society is not heard in Brussels. Therefore we also believe that one of the biggest challenges for the movement is to motivate everyone, who cares about sharing and creativity. Therefore we took part in Mozfest, the event connecting a global group of people working toward an open, innovative, and censorship-free web.
The most important for us was the opportunity to meet advocates interested in a variety of different areas, including open education, Wikimedians, and those dealing with network neutrality and online censorship. They all have reasons to be interested in the direction of the development of copyright law in Europe, and we did our best to get them them on board with copyright reform actions.
The proposal to reform copyright, presented in September, showed that the European Commission does not intend to keep up with the times and create regulations that would support the development of the information society and the Digital Single Market. Unfortunately, it also showed that the voice of civil society is not heard in Brussels. Even when we provide detailed feedback and recommendations, our views are not taken into account.
During CopyCamp 2016 we organized a meeting with representatives of NGOs from Poland and other countries, aiming to talk about how to effectively promote the rights of users in the discussion on EU copyright reform.
We were curious whether the participants of our lunch also believed that existing methods of communicating our positions were not effective enough. And if so, what would we do to make politicians realize that the copyright reform needs to look beyond securing the profits of traditional business models and focus on changes that will support the new digital economy, while at the same time protecting users’ rights.
This post was written by Natalia Mileszyk and Lisette Kalshoven, and also posted on the Creative Commons blog.
Last week at the Creative Commons Europe Meeting in Lisbon, COMMUNIA organised a “School of Rock(ing) Copyright” workshop. Creative Commons affiliates from Poland, the Netherlands, and Portugal joined efforts in sharing knowledge about the current European copyright reform. We examined the political process for updating the copyright rules, and asked for help from other CC Europe affiliates in advocating for positive copyright changes. We were pleased to have around 15 participants from as many EU countries attend the session. Since we’re at a crucial stage within the European legislative process, we were eager to discuss the ins and outs on how we can create a better copyright for Europe.
Why does the CC community care about copyright reform? We all stand for creativity, innovation, access to knowledge, and development. Copyright can both boost or limit these goals, so we are actively involved to make progressive changes to copyright to benefit users, education, and the commons.
At the ‘school’ we focused on four different areas that people need to know about when engaging in advocacy for copyright reform in Europe. First, we provided a quick overview on ‘Brussels’ and how the different institutions such as the European Commission and Parliament interact. Second, we explained how the legislative process works. The Commission proposal is out, but it’s far from the end of the process! Third, we shared tactics and tips for getting involved in advocacy activities. These often seem obvious, but are very important when interacting with politicians. For example: never ask for anything people can’t give you, and come to the table with clear, concise suggestions. Few politicians have the time to read a 200 page research report, no matter how riveting we think it is! The fourth and last part of our workshop dug into a few key topics within the current copyright reform proposal, including areas such as cultural heritage, education, and research. Continue reading
Can we make copyright serve users better? We asked several copyright policy experts from civil society organisations for their view on the current copyright reform: what are the biggest hopes, the biggest fears and their concrete plans to improve the current copyright regime to fit our digital society? Film maker Sebastiaan ter Burg created the video below to share their answers:
The video was recorded during the event Copyright Reform: Unlocking copyright for users co-organised by COMMUNIA and EDRi and co-hosted by MEPs Therese Comodini Cachia and Carlos Zorrinho.
We would like to thank Diego Naranjo (Edri), Raegan MacDonald (Mozilla), Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov (Wikimedia), Ruth Coustick-Deal (OpenMedia), Till Kreutzer (IGEL) and Gwen Franck (Creative Commons) for their contribution to this video.
We happily invite you to the event Copyright Reform: Unlocking copyright for users? that will take place on September 8 in Brussels. The event is hosted by MEP Therese Comodini Cachia and MEP Carlos Zorrinho, and co-organised by COMMUNIA and EDRi.
Join us to discuss key aspects of the current EU copyright reform including the freedom to use copyrighted works (exceptions and limitations) as well as some of the failures of the existing legal framework (copyfails). After the event we invite you to lunch in Jan 3q Brasserie.
11:15 – 11:20 Introduction
Anna Mazgal, Communia
11:20 – 11:25 Welcome
MEP Therese Comodini Cachia (EPP)
11:25 – 11:35 How to understand the L&E practice better?
Launch of copyrightexceptions.eu – Maarten Zeinstra, Kennisland
11:35 – 11:45 What doesn’t work?
The #copyfails and ways out of the copy mess – Diego Naranjo, EDRi
11:45 – 11:55 What works?
Presentation of the Best Case Studies – Teresa Nobre, Communia
11:55 – 13:00 Questions and discussion
facilitated by Anna Mazgal, Communia
13:00 – 13:05 Commentary
MEP Carlos Zorrinho (PASD)
13:05 – 13:15 Closing remarks
MEP Therese Comodini Cachia (EPP)
13:15 – 14:00 Lunch
Brasserie Jan 3q Continue reading
