10 years of COMMUNIA, a decade of copyright reform: how far did we get?

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Last week, on June 15, COMMUNIA celebrated its first 10 years. To mark the event, we decided to revisit the 14 policy recommendations that were issued at the moment of our foundation, and that have been the guiding principles for our advocacy work in the last decade.

We launched a new website, dedicated to reviewing the implementation of these policy recommendations. 10 years on, it is possible to see that half of our recommendations have been implemented – fully or partially -, and the other half remains unfulfilled. Most importantly, almost all of the recommendations are still relevant.

Where victory can be claimed: freeing digital reproductions of public domain works and giving access to orphan works

One of COMMUNIA’s main objectives since its foundation has been to promote and protect the digital public domain. Therefore, when the EU Parliament decided to follow our Recommendation #5 and proposed the introduction of a provision in the new Copyright Directive, preventing Member States from protecting non original reproductions of works of visual arts in the public domain with copyright or related rights, we were exhilarated. Article 14 not only reconfirms the principle that no one should be able to claim exclusive control over works that are in the public domain; it’s also the first EU piece of legislation to expressly refer to the concept of “public domain”.

Getting the “public domain” to enter the EU acquis lexicon was a major victory for user rights, but for sure more measures are needed to effectively protect the Public Domain. Our Recommendation #6, which called for sanctioning false or misleading attempts to misappropriate or claim exclusive rights over public domain material, has not been implemented and is more relevant than ever, particularly on online content sharing platforms. Here, a false ownership claim can easily lead to the false blocking of public domain material, as a result of the use of automated content recognition systems combined with the lack of public databases of ownership rights (that’s why the German legislator has recently adopted measures against this type of abuse, setting a new standard for the protection of the Public Domain).

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Implementing the Copyright Directive: Protecting the Public Domain with Article 14

The Doctor's Dream
Ending the appropriation of Public Domain works
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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. 

What is in the public domain in analogue form is [not always] in the public domain in digital form

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 →

Mercosur-EU Free Trade Agreement: a bad deal for the public domain

Handel en koopvaardij
Stop the secret erosion of the Public Domain
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Contrary to what the negotiating parties expected (and what many civil societies organizations feared), the Mercosur-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was not signed during the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference that took place at the beginning of December in Buenos Aires. Thus, the signing of the FTA that has been negotiated for almost twenty years was postponed once again. Over this time the negotiations were frozen during the era of the leftist governments in South America, but regained speed after the arrival of neoliberal governments to Brazil and Argentina.

Like many other multilateral agreements that have been negotiated in recent years (TPP, TTIP, etc.), the Mercosur-EU FTA covers a large number of areas (not all strictly related to trade) ranging from the exchange of goods to capital movements, phytosanitary measures, electronic commerce and intellectual property (IP). The area of ​​negotiation related to IP is extremely broad, including patents, trademarks, geographical indications and copyright, among other topics.

From TRIPS to TRIPS Plus

In most of the issues related to IP, the Mercosur-EU FTA goes beyond the international obligations imposed on the countries in 1994 with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in the context of the creation of the World Trade Organization. TRIPS established a minimum regulatory floor on IP that forced a large number of countries, including those of the Mercosur, to modify their laws, establishing restrictions on the circulation of knowledge and negatively affecting the public domain. In the field of copyright, TRIPS established a minimum copyright term of the author’s life plus 50 years, meaning that countries like Uruguay, which at that time had a term of only 40 years, was a major change. TRIPS also forced the countries to establish criminal penalties for IP infringements conducted on a commercial scale, as well as to protect software using the same regulatory framework as that applied to literary works. While some of these measures were already established in the Berne Convention and other treaties administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization, TRIPS stipulated economic sanctions for countries that did not comply with the obligations, which resulted in rapid adaptation to a new regulatory framework. Continue reading →

Members of the European Parliament call for safeguarding the Public Domain

Vrouw op een jaarmarkt door een dief van haar geldbuidel beroofd
stop the misappropriation of public domain works
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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 →

What does Anne Frank tell us about copyright reform?

Anne Frank campaign cover photo
#readannediary
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On April 26—World Intellectual Property Day—the original, Dutch-language version of The Diary of Anne Frank was published online at annefrank.centrumcyfrowe.pl. With the publication of the original version of the diary, we wanted to highlight the absurdly long copyright terms in the EU. In addition, we wanted to point out that, contrary to the general assumption, the duration of copyright is still not unified across the EU. This leads to the troubling practice of geo-blocking which creates artificial boundaries online. Our posting of the diary online attempts to show the complicated copyright framework for this and similar works, and champions freedom to access to cultural heritage works in the public domain for  creators as well as users. But our campaign appeared to convey an even stronger message.

The campaign raised various concerns with regard to copyright terms and access to culture. We’ve already examined the differences between the three versions of the diary, so we won’t go into that in depth here. Without a doubt, versions A and B did not enter into public domain in the Netherlands due to specific copyright regulations (This is due to a transitional rule in the Dutch copyright act which states that works posthumously published before 1995 will retain copyright — in this case large parts of the original writings will only expire in 2037).

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Anne Frank and the Term of Copyright Protection: Why it’s Time to Move from Harmonisation to Unification

Anne Frank campaign cover photo
#readannediary
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The text was written by Katarzyna Strycharz. 

Since the beginning of the year there’s been a lot of discussion (and confusion too) about whether the Diary of Anne Frank is now in public domain. Under the normal rules regarding the duration of copyright protection, the work should have entered into the public domain on 1 January 2016. However, there were several unusual circumstances that brought this into question. First, the Anne Frank Foundation announced their plans to list Otto (Anne Frank’s father) as a co-author, which would extend the protection period of the published diary until 2050. Next, due to a transitional rule in Dutch law it became clear that Anne Frank’s original writings would not enter the public domain in 2016 in the Netherlands (and many other EU countries with similar rules). Finally, in early February the Wikimedia Foundation (the organization that hosts Wikipedia and related projects) decided to remove the Dutch-language text of the diary from Wikisource.

On Tuesday 26 April, World Intellectual Property Day, the original, Dutch-language version of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank” will be published online at annefrank.centrumcyfrowe.pl. With this publication of the original version of the diary we seek to highlight the absurdly long duration of copyright in the EU, as well as the fact that, contrary to general assumptions, the duration of copyright is still not unified across the EU and the troubling fact of geo-blocking which creates boundaries online.

On the Anne Frank Foundation website we can read that “Anne Frank’s original writings, as well as the original in-print versions will remain protected for many decades”. So, when does the copyright of the diary expire? It seems that the answer varies from country to country, and we’ll try to investigate whether there is somewhere in the EU where the writings of Anne Frank are now in the public domain.

Transitional provisions in the Dutch law

To fully understand the issue at hand, we observe that there are actually three versions of Anne Frank’s diary writings. Two versions of her manuscripts (version A and B) were combined into the book (version C). This book is commonly known as the the Diary of Anne Frank, and was published in 1947.

As we have previously discussed, version C was compiled by Otto Frank and thus is still protected by copyright 70 years from the time of his death in 1980. But in the case of manuscripts (version A and B) there is no doubt that Anne Frank was the sole author. As we can read  in the statement of the Anne Frank Stichting (who runs the Achterhuis in Amsterdam)“Otto Frank is not the co-author of the original diary writings of Anne Frank”. The same is confirmed by the Anne Frank Foundation (who own the copyrights in Anne’s work), which claims that “copyrights to Anne Frank’s original texts originally belonged to the author, Anne Frank herself”.

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Page from ‘De Dagboeken van Anne Frank”, published by the Dutch Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2001 edition), showing the three versions (from top to bottom A, B and C) of the 9 november 1942 entry in Anne Frank’s diary.

In the Netherlands copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the author. And even though Anne Frank was killed in 1945, this doesn’t mean that the A and B versions of her diary are in the public domain under Dutch law. This is because the full manuscripts were first published in 1986, and the rule at that time said that works which were first published posthumously are protected for 50 years after the initial publication.

The 2013 Dutch copyright act implementing the 1991 term directive contained transitional provisions stipulating that rights which existed under the previous law continue to exist. This means that versions A and B of the Frank diary will remain under copyright in the Netherlands until 1 January 2037 (50 years after the 1986 publication).

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What the diary of Anne Frank can tell us about Text and Data mining

Allegorie op de scheikunde
Copyright must not be used to thwart scientific research
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Recently, everybody has been busy discussing the question of whether the Diary of Anne Frank will enter (or by now, has entered) the public domain on January 1st this year (Answer: It’s complicated). Surprisingly, the discussions surrounding the copyright in Anne Frank’s writings may shed some light on another contentious copyright policy issue: text and data mining. These insights are the result of a recent ruling by the District Court of Amsterdam in dealing with a dispute between the Anne Frank Stichting (owner of the physical diaries and operator of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam) and the Anne Frank Fonds (owner of the copyrights in Anne Frank’s writings).

The Anne Frank Stichting announced plans to publish an edition of Anne Frank’s texts online after the presumed expiration of the copyright on January 1, 2016. In response, the Anne Frank Fonds sued the Stichting over what it considered unauthorised reproductions of Anne Frank’s writings. The reproductions had been made by the Stichting as part of its preparatory research for the on-line publication after the new year. Initially, this seemed to be an attempt by the Fonds to thwart or delay the Stichting’s plans for an online edition.

However, during the course of the legal arguments it became clear that under Dutch law (which governs uses made by the Stichting), Anne Frank’s original writings would not enter the public domain in 2016. This is due to a transitional rule in the Dutch copyright act which states that works posthumously published before 1995 will retain copyright—in this case large parts of the original writings will only expire in 2037.

While this means that the Stichting had to shelve its plan to publish an online edition, the Fonds continued to press charges related to the reproductions (XML-TEI files) made by the Stichting in order to carry out its textual and historical research. The Stichting was sued alongside their research partner the Dutch Royal Academy of Science (KNAW). Both upheld the position that it did not require permission for making reproductions solely intended to enable its internal scholarship, claiming that copyright law should not be used to thwart scientific research. Continue reading →

Invitation to Public Domain Day celebration in the European Parliament

Affiche Delftsche Slaolie
Celebrate Culture with us in the European Parliament
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Join us on January 25th in the European Parliament to celebrate Public Domain Day. This day falls on the first day of the new year and marks the term of copyright protection on creative works.

This new state for cultural works means that they are now free to be reused for new cultural, commercial, educational and innovative practices. During the lunch-event in the Members Salon we will talk about the value of the public domain in fostering Europe’s innovation capacities, by inviting creators to share how they use public domain works in their businesses and approach copyright.

Speakers include our host in the European Parliament Felix Reda (MEP, The Greens EFA – Germany), Alek Tarkowski (Director Centrum Cyfrowe), Paul Keller (Director Kennisland).

Please RSVP for this event to Lisette Kalshoven at lk@kl.nl

For more details please refer to the official invitation.

The Little Prince: almost in the Public Domain

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This week is Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of the law, and addressing what’s at stake, and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation. Today’s subject is the Public Domain.

Despite nearly 25 years of efforts to fully harmonise digital law in Europe, the road to a harmonised copyright system is certainly not a speedy highway. In fact, each Member State still has its own copyright system that applies within its own territory. One of the areas where this is most visible are the rules for determining when a particular work enters the public domain because the copyright term has expired.

The Little Prince 6th Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was killed in 1944, during a flight over the Mediterranean Sea. “The Little Prince”, his best-known book, is the third most popular novel in the world, translated into over 250 languages over more than 600 translations. More than 80 million copies have been printed. If you know a bit about the rules for determining when a work goes out of copyright, we can assume that on 1st January 2015 “The Little Prince” became part of the public domain. This is because in France copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the author. And since Saint-Exupéry died in 1944, this would put “The Little Prince” into the public domain in France.

However, the harmonization of the duration of copyright is not uniform. In France, works of authors who died for France during the First and Second World Wars benefit from additional copyright protection. Copyright for works created by these authors is extended for an additional 30 years to compensate for the losses and difficulties in the commercial exploitation of their works during the war.

Beginning this year, “The Little Prince” is in the public domain almost everywhere in Europe. But in France, the novel will pass into the public domain sometime between 1 May 2033 and 1 January 2045, depending on your interpretations of the rules! Interestingly, Canadians have been freely using “The Little Prince” for the last 20 years, as copyright expires there 50 years after the death of the creator.

The French exception may seem surprising to you, but it’s not an outlier. There are multiple other such exceptions present in various European countries. When such irregularities are combined with inconsistent terminology within the European Directives (not to mention differences in the ways the Directives are implemented at the national level) along with unreliable information on the dates of death of the authors, we see we’re a long way from sensible harmonization of copyright law across Europe.

Fortunately, there is good news: establishing a single European framework that enables cross-border flow of products and services is one of the priorities of Jean-Claude Juncker, the newly elected President of the European Commission. The recent report by MEP Reda on the evaluation of the Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC), and tweets made by Commisioner Oettinger and Vice-President Ansip about the need of new copyright rules, are all hopefully signs of coming change. We hope that we’ll be able to report about it during Copyright Week 2016.

(Paul Keller wrote about “The Little Prince” and the public domain on this blog in 2012).

Calculating the Public Domain

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Many people recognise the value of works which are in the public domain and may even be familiar with many initiatives that provide access to public domain works (such as the Internet Archive, Wikimedia Commons, Project Gutenberg, etc). Yet, many people do not have a very clear conception of what the public domain is or why it is important.

New digital technologies make it possible for the public to access a vast quantity of cultural and historical material. Much of this material is in the public domain, and ongoing digitisation efforts mean that much more public domain material (in which copyright has expired) will be made available for the public to enjoy, share, and reuse.

However, it is often difficult to determine whether a work has entered the public domain in any given jurisdiction, because the terms of copyright protection differ from country to country. And  people are sometimes unclear about what can or cannot be done with works in the public domain. Copyright laws are complicated, and for the layperson it may not be clear how they apply in relation to a specific work. Though there are many international and multinational copyright agreements and copyright organisations, the exact details of copyright law vary from one country to another. Different countries have different legal systems and traditions – and copyright laws reflect these differences. Hence, given that works enter the public domain under different circumstances depending on the country, oftentimes the status of an individual work cannot be universally established. Rather, it needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis for every jurisdiction.

In order to make public domain determinations a less daunting task, the Open Knowledge Foundation has been working on the development of the Public Domain Calculators (http://publicdomain.okfn.org/calculators/) – a tool that enables people to determine the copyright status of a work (in the public domain, or not), thus helping users realize the value of artworks from the past.

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