LicentieLa vertu pour guidePublic domainJacob van der SchleyThis week, we launched our Guidelines for the Implementation of the DSM Directive. This is part of a series of blogposts dedicated to the various provisions analysed in our guidelines. Today we give a quick explanation of the mandatory exception for preservation of cultural heritage contained in the new Copyright Directive.
For a detailed analysis, please read IFLA and Communia’s guide on Article 6, authored by Stephen Wyber. Continue reading
LicentieLa vertu pour guidePublic domainJacob van der SchleyThis week, we launched our Guidelines for the Implementation of the DSM Directive. This is part of a series of blogposts dedicated to the various provisions analysed in our guidelines. Today we give a quick explanation of the mandatory exception for digital and cross-border education contained in the new Copyright Directive.
For a detailed analysis, please read Communia’s guide on Article 5, authored by Teresa Nobre. Continue reading
LicentieLa vertu pour guidePublic domainJacob van der SchleyYesterday, we launched our Guidelines for the Implementation of the DSM Directive. This is the first of a series of blogposts dedicated to the various provisions analysed in our guidelines. Today we give a quick explanation of the two mandatory exceptions for text and data mining contained in the new Copyright Directive.
For a detailed analysis, please read LIBER and Communia’s guide on Articles 3 and 4, authored by Benjamin White and Maja Bogataj Jančič. Continue reading
LicentieCopyright stakeholder dialoguePublic Domain Dedication CC ZEROUnknown (modified by COMMUNIA)Last week’s third meeting of the Article 17 Stakeholder dialogue was the first one of what the Commission had referred to as the 2nd phase of the dialogue. After two meetings of introductory statements by various stakeholders (see our reports here and here), the third meeting consisted of a number of more in depth technical presentations on content recognition technologies and on existing licensing models (Video recording available here).
The morning session saw presentations from three technology providers. YouTube presented its own Content ID system, PEX presented its platform independent attribution engine and finally Videntifier showed off its video and image matching technology.
The biggest part of the discussion in the morning was centered around understanding the way YouTube’s content ID system works and how it relates to copyright (hint: it’s complicated). The overall impression that arose from the discussion is that very few participants actually understand how content ID works (and those who do, like the big record labels, don’t seem to be interested in talking about it). The fact that the Commission was among those asking questions to get a better understanding of the inner working of content ID is rather striking in the context that evidence based lawmaking was supposed to be one of the priorities of the Junker commission. So far the stakeholder dialogue seems more like an exercise in legislation based fact finding.
While many aspects of Content ID remained opaque, one thing became clear though-out the three presentations: none of the presented technologies can do more than matching content in user uploads. None of the technologies presented can understand the context in which a use takes place and as a result they are incapable of detecting if a use is covered by an exception or not. In the words of the technology providers (lightly edited for clarity): Continue reading
LicentieLa vertu pour guidePublic domainJacob van der SchleyWe are thrilled to release our Guidelines for Implementation of the DSM Directive.
These guidelines explain different provisions of the new Copyright Directive and make suggestions on what to advocate for during the implementation process of those provisions in the EU Member States. They are aimed at local advocates and national policy makers, and have the general objective of expanding and strengthening user rights at a national level beyond what is strictly prescribed by the new Directive.
Communia partnered with LIBER (Articles 3 and 4), IFLA (Article 6) and Europeana (Articles 8 to 11) for the creation of these guidelines. The guidelines are part of a wider implementation project of COMMUNIA and its members Centrum Cyfrowe and Wikimedia, which includes a range of activities (including our transposition bootcamp) to make sure that local communities in as many Member States as possible participate in their national legislative processes.
The two and a half years of public discussions of the new Copyright Directive were largely centred on a small number of problematic clauses (the press publishers right and the upload filters). However, the Directive also includes a number of provisions that improve the existing EU copyright rules (a number of new copyright exceptions and protections for the public domain).
While the national implementations will have to include all the problematic aspects of the new Copyright Directive, there is some room for meaningful improvements, and some measures can be taken to mitigate the worst provisions of the Directive. The EU Member States have until 7 June 2021 to implement the Directive into their national laws.
Our detailed proposals try to achieve the general objective of expanding and strengthening user rights by suggesting that, during the national implementation process, Member States make use of the following flexibilities: Continue reading
Yesterday 51 leading European copyright scholars published a statement on “Safeguarding User Freedoms in Implementing Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive“. The statement is intended as input into the ongoing stakeholder dialogue. It focuses on the interplay between user rights and the filtering obligations established by Article 17. From the Kluwer Copyright blog:
Against this backdrop, a group of European academics (including the author of this post) has drafted a document with recommendations on user freedoms and safeguards included in Article 17 of the DSM Directive – namely in its paragraphs (7) and (9), to be read in the context of the aforementioned stakeholder dialogues. The recommendations are divided into three sections: on promoting licensing and limiting preventive measures; on exceptions and limitations in Article 17 (user freedoms); and on minimizing the risks of broad filtering and over-blocking (user safeguards). Despite the controversial nature of the topic, the recommendation has already been endorsed by around 50 European academics in this area, which is a testament to its balanced approach. Our intention is that these recommendations and interpretative guidelines are taken into consideration by the Commission, stakeholders, and Member States in their discussions on national implementations of Article 17 DSM Directive.
Based on a close reading of paragraphs 17(7) and 17(9), the academics show that Article 17 requires online platforms (OCSSPs in the language of the directive) to prioritise protecting users rights over blocking content. This statement provides strong support for our positions in the stakeholder dialogue. Continue reading
LicentieCopyright stakeholder dialoguePublic Domain Dedication CC ZEROUnknown (modified by COMMUNIA)On Tuesday this week the participants of the stakeholder dialogue on Article 17 of the EU copyright directive convened in Brussels for the second meeting. After a first meeting that focussed on practices in the music, games and software sectors (see our report here), this week’s meeting focussed on the current situation in the audiovisual (AV) and publishing sectors.
The meeting kicked off with a long series of statements from the many different rightholders in the AV sector (see the video recording here). The assembled sector representatives made it clear that from their perspective Article 17 is welcome (as it clarifies that online platforms need to obtain licenses for the works uploaded by their users) but that they are not interested in widely licensing AV works to UGC platforms and would instead focus on the blocking and removing of unlicensed content via the upload filtering mechanisms introduced by Article 17.
This approach is the logical consequence of the predominant business model in the AV sector which relies on exclusive licensing to selected outlets (Cinema, TV, VOD platforms). It directly contradicts the music industries’ narrative from the first meeting that Article 17 is about licensing and not about blocking access – as in the case of music general availability is crucial. Representatives of the AV industry made it very clear that they would fight any attempts at non-voluntary licensing and that they would also fight against effective protection for user rights under exceptions and licensing (see for example the statement issued by the Motion Picture Association starting at 10:41:44 of the video recording). These initial statements make it clear that the AV industry does indeed look at Article 17 as an instrument to limit freedom of expression and reuse and will likely use the stakeholder dialogue to bend the article further in this direction. Continue reading
Few months have already passed since The Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market was adopted in April this year. We did our best to use this time wisely to evaluate risks and opportunities for users’ rights and public domain created in the new legal framework and one thing is certain for us – we need a strong access to knowledge movement engagement also during transpositions in all member states – there is still a lot to be done.
Alongside with our members (Wikimedia, Creative Commons and Centrum Cyfrowe Foundation) we want to make sure that local communities in as many countries as possible participate in the national legislative process and provide input on how to shape national rules to ensure user rights and access to knowledge are strengthened, not weakened.
In order to build capacity we have organized a Transportation Bootcamp – an opportunity for activists to meet, share experiences, learn about the challenges related to transposition, think about arguments and tactics. For this 35 people from various communities (Wikimedia, Creative Commons, digital rights activists and GLAM experts) gathered in Warsaw, from October 11 to 13, to share and learn.
At the Bootcamp we explained the (soon to be published) suite of documents with implementation guidelines prepared by a group of legal experts. We also invited experts and policy makers that have been active on this reform over the past years to provide insight to activists. We started planning national activities with communities. We got to know each other. And we realized (once again) how many question marks these directive leave for national legislators to decide – and how much is still to be done.
The Member States have until 7 June 2021 to transpose the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive into their national laws. This once-in-a-decade change in copyright rules is a reason we have decided to work with activists in Member States on their national transposition (publishing position papers, organising events, contacting lawmakers, coalition building, etc.). If you feel like participating in this process in order to support access to knowledge, feel free to contact us: transposition@communia-association.org – we’re happy to have you on board with our project!
Earlier this year, Poland initiated a legal challenge against Article 17 of the Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) [C-401/19]. The CJEU has finally published the application for this legal challenge. Our member, Centrum Cyfrowe Foundation, has tried to get access to the complaint before using Freedom of Information requests, without success…
In our opinion, referring the Directive to the Court of Justice is a good step that can help clear controversies concerning Article 17. An independent court will assess issues that in the policy debate are usually dismissed by representatives of rightsholders as fear-mongering or disinformation.
The Republic of Poland seeks the annulment of Article 17(4)(b) and Article 17(4)(c), in fine of the Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market. In the alternative, should the Court find that the contested provisions cannot be deleted from Article 17 of Directive without substantively changing the rules contained in the remaining provisions of that article, the Republic of Poland claims that the Court should annul Article 17 of Directive in its entirety.Continue reading
Article 14 – Works of visual art in the public domain – is one of the very few unambiguously good provisions of the new EU copyright directive. The article is intended to ensure that (digital) reproductions of public domain works cannot be protected by exclusive rights, and as a result, taken out of the public domain. This legislative intervention comes in response to the relatively widespread practice of museums in claiming exclusive rights of digital reproductions of public domain works that they have in their collections and which they make available to the public. In practice this has already led to Spanish Museums claiming copyright over paintings by Dutch masters who have been dead for 350 years, and German museums suing Wikipedia for hosting reproductions of public domain works as part of Wikimedia Commons.
While at first glance it seems counterintuitive that a museum should be able to control the rights for artworks of long dead artists, such claims do have a basis in existing law. In general, for a work to be protected under copyright it needs to show “the author’s own intellectual creation.” However, there is another category of copyright-like rights (also called “related rights”) that exist in a number of EU Member States. These related rights schemes grant exclusive rights to the creators of photographic works that do not meet the originality criterion necessary to receive copyright protection (See this 2015 study by Thomas Margoni for more details). Related rights arise even when a reproduction is nothing more than an exact photographic copy of a work. Where copyright protects original artworks, these related rights protect simple copies.
As museums have started to make works in their collections available online, the practice of relying on related rights to restrict the re-use of non-original reproductions of public domain works has become controversial. Both the Public Domain Manifesto and the Europeana Public Domain Charter demanded that what is in the public domain in analogue form must stay in the public domain in digital form (as does our own policy recommendation #5). While the overall majority of museums have always acted in the spirit of expanding the public domain, and have made reproductions of public domain works available without any restrictions on re-use, a small number of museums from Member States that allow the protection of non-original reproductions of public domain works continue to claim rights over such reproductions. Continue reading
