yes. i am lonesome tonight.

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yes. i am lonesome tonight. is a video by visual artist and performer Daniel Pinheiro, and probably one of the most intelligent uses of a pre-existing work that you’ll see on social media platforms today and tomorrow. Not the day after, because copyright infringement will soon prompt its removal.

You see, some of the works created by Daniel Pinheiro rely heavily on copyrighted works that do not belong to him. yes. i am lonesome tonight. consists of a black screen in which the words “yes”, “i did”, “i’m sorry” and “i didn’t” appear as answers to the questions posed by Elvis Presley in the song “Are you lonesome tonight”, composed by Lou Handman and Roy Turk. Elvis sings “Are you lonesome tonight” and Daniel whispers “Yes”. And so it goes:

Do you miss me tonight?

Yes.

Are you sorry we drifted apart?

Yes.

Could fair use save the lonely artist?

Daniel’s intervention is minimal, from a quantitative point of view, and he uses the source work in its entirety, which would weigh against fair use, in countries where fair use exists. Yet I doubt any art curator or critic would not render it as a new and unexpected use of Elvis’ musical performance. In other words, the transformative character of yes. i am lonesome tonight. could perhaps be enough to consider this Visual-Art work a fair use, even when all the remaining statutory factors (such as the amount of the source work used) would traditionally weigh against fair use. Continue reading →

Fair and flexible: what we can learn from Canadian copyright law

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The "fair dealing" exception
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With the EU and other states looking to modernise copyright law for the digital era, education exceptions in copyright law are a hot topic. Particularly, the second paragraph of Article 4 of the proposed directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market that gives room to educational licenses is being contested by educators, learners, and educational organisations. Canadian copyright law includes the doctrine of “fair dealing” — a unique version of a common exception. The European approach sees legal concepts determined by rightsholders through license agreements. Anxious to protect their position of power, representatives of rightsholders in Europe have often pointed at the Canadian exception as a dangerous example that has negatively impacted the educational publishing industry in Canada. These statements do not hold any merit. The Canadian doctrine offers both a solution to the legal question of how copyright exceptions can be drafted to the benefit of education and should inspire countries around the world who want to improve education exceptions. Continue reading →

New study: ever more complex copyright is holding back creators

Creative Jail
Copyright must not become a creative jail
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One of the biggest shortcomings of the discussion on copyright is that most of it seems stuck in a fairly outdated creators vs users dichotomy. Copyright laws around the world are generally structured in such a way that they grant exclusive rights to creators and try to balance these with a limited set of rights for users (in the form of exceptions or limitations to copyright). Based on this design it is widely assumed that more (or stronger) exclusive rights benefit creators and that more (or broader) exceptions to copyright benefit users.

This conception is problematic on a number of levels. For one it is clear that creators benefit from user rights that ensure that users have a basic level of access to culture through educational systems and via public institutions such as museums and libraries. On the other hand users benefit from the exclusive rights granted to creators as they incentivise the very production of culture and knowledge that they want to access.

A more fundamental challenge to this general understanding of copyright is posed by the fact that the roles of users and creators are not mutually exclusive,  but overlapping. Many creators are also users of copyrighted materials and the other way around. The technological development of the past two decades has contributed to this blurring of the boundaries between creators and users. Digital technologies greatly facilitate both the creative re-use of existing works and the distribution of the resulting new works. This development has resulted in the emergence of the (somewhat nonsensical) category of “user generated content” and concepts like the “prosumer“.

These concepts deal with users becoming creators, and there are relatively straightforward answers to the challenges posed, such as the need to introduce an exception for user generated content in the EU copyright framework that we have been advocating for. But there is another more interesting side of the coin: creators becoming users. While it is true that creators have always appropriated the works of those authors who came before them, these dynamics have been turbocharged by the digital revolution. Creators have entire libraries of content at their fingertips, and the tools to manipulate, incorporate and build on existing works are becoming increasingly sophisticated. These are exciting times to be a creator, but this new reality also brings creators into contact with the limitations to their creative freedom imposed by copyright law. Continue reading →

Estonian Presidency makes one more step towards licensing educational content

Soap Bubbles
Do not import across Europe Extended Collective Licensing for education
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Do you remember the idea of educational fair use? The idea that education can benefit from a broad, flexible exception for a wide range of uses of copyrighted content while teaching and learning? The question is worth asking, as this progressive approach to copyright and education has not been mentioned even once in the ongoing European copyright reform process. It is a sign of how far away we are from right copyright for education. Instead, we are being pulled ever deeper into an opposite model, in which licensing is seen as the best copyright solution for educators and educational institutions. The Council of the European Union has just made one more step in that direction.

A quick reminder where we are with the copyright reform process in Brussels: the key vote in the JURI committee is continuously extended, and currently is planned for January 2018. The date should be seen as tentative. In the meantime, one more committee – the civil liberties committee LIBE – will make it’s vote in late November (but with a sole focus on the controversial article 13, the content filter article). As we await decisions to be made in the European Parliament, a proposal from the Council, prepared by the Estonian Presidency, has recently surfaced. Unfortunately, it spells one more step towards the licensing chasm for the educational sector.Continue reading →

Why Australian Schools Need Fair Use

Interieur met een vrouw die de krant leest
Australia on getting a better copyright for education
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It is Fair Use week, and we have a special guest author sharing about a copyright debate that is considering implementing Fair Use: Delia Browne is National Copyright Director of the Australian National Copyright Unit (Schools and TAFEs). Australia is in the process of re-evaluating its copyright law, including the rules regarding education. The Australian reform offers interesting parallels with the actions in the European Union. We can only wish that a debate on flexible copyright norm was taking place also in Europe.

Like almost all nations, education is crucial to the future economic and social well-being of Australia. These are exciting times for education, but the benefits of the digital era will not be fully realised in our classrooms unless greater flexibility is introduced into our copyright laws. The rules around copyright were designed in the age of the photocopier; these are not working in the age of the iPad and the 3D printer, and are holding back innovation in schools.

The current system isn’t working

Copyright reform is a significant issue for Australian schools, as Australia’s outdated copyright laws currently stand in the way of teachers using the most modern teaching methods in the interests of Australian students. For example: Continue reading →

Guestpost: Looking beyond Google for online access to EU culture and knowledge

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Last month the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from US authors who attempted to overturn a prior decision that Google’s scanning of millions in copyright books amounted to “fair use”. This refusal marks the end of a decade long legal fight about the Google books project. This means that in the US Google is free to scan and index in copyright protected books, in order to allow internet users to search the contents of the books.

The fact that Google is allowed to do this has received much criticism, not only from authors in the US but also from rights holders and media in Europe. Much of this criticism has been directed to the fact that the ruling allows a commercial entity to provide access to the full corpus of literature published in the US, but misses a much more important point.

As Ellen Euler, the Deputy Managing Director for Finance, Law, Communication of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek points out in her guest contribution below, this means that internet users in the US have access to a much broader body of knowledge and culture than the internet users in the EU. According to Euler we should not see Google Books as a threat to culture but rather as a reminder that Europe urgently needs to create a legal framework that enables access to the collections of our libraries, archives and museums, preferably by allowing them to make their collections available via their own online platforms.

Looking beyond Google for online access to EU culture and knowledge

by Ellen Euler

In the the digital and networked 21st century, cultural heritage institutions have an extended mandate: they must not only provide local access to culture and knowledge, but are also expected to make their collections available via the internet. As we spend an increasing amount of our time online, expect to be able to view and enjoy the the rich collections of our libraries, museums, and archives. And it’s important to provide online access to enable the discovery and innovative reuse of our shared cultural commons. As Tim Berners-Lee, one of the inventors of the web, sums up: “What’s not on the Net, is not in the world”.

When we digitize content from cultural heritage institutions, we begin the process of opening those materials to the world. As Armand Marie Leroi, a humanist and professor of evolutionary biology once said, “digitisation transforms them from caterpillars into butterflies”. Digitized texts allow us to pose entirely new questions and acquire new knowledge based on full-text searches and via other analytical tools and methods. This type of information mining is no longer restricted only to texts. Image recognition tools, combined with standardised metadata and geographical data, make it possible to interrogate other types of content too. We can use new quantitative research methods to test hypotheses and create linkages between bodies of knowledge. We can create virtual research environments to enable the contextualisation of collections within a broader framework.Continue reading →

Fair use and the importance of flexible copyright exceptions

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A universe of limitations to copyright
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It’s Fair Use Week, and organizations and individuals are publishing blog posts, hosting workshops, and sharing educational media about the implementation and importance of this essential limitation to the rights endowed by copyright. Fair use is a flexible legal tool that permits some uses of copyrighted material without permission from the original rightsholder, such as for use in news reporting, criticism, teaching, and other reasons. A fair use is not an infringement of copyright.

The doctrine of fair use sits under the larger umbrella of limitations and exceptions to copyright. These limitations are a necessary check on the exclusive rights granted to copyright holders. Even though fair use has only been adopted by a small number of countries, in Europe there are several exceptions that are central to supporting permission-free uses of copyrighted content for various public interest goals. Both fair use and flexible copyright exceptions serve the same basic purpose, but under different legal landscapes.

We’ve highlighted several commonsense limitations to copyright that should be adopted and standardised throughout the EU. These include exceptions for educational use, for cultural heritage institutions to be able to share out-of-commerce works online, for freedom of panorama, and for audiovisual quotation. It’s important that these exceptions are made mandatory and are fully harmonised across all EU member states.

We’re especially interested in how limitations and exceptions to copyright can support modern education practices. Last month we published a policy paper outlining the requirements for a progressive EU-wide exception to copyright for educational purposes. This exception should 1) address local and cross-border education needs; 2) be mandatory; 3) be neutral with regard to media type, format, and technology; 4) be flexible; and 5) cover all necessary uses provided they are in accordance with fair practice.

As we observe Fair Use Week 2016, we’re happy to see that users around the world are taking advantage of limitations and exceptions—an important safety valve to the rules of default copyright. We’re hopeful that in the coming months the Commission will support the creation of exceptions that balance the interests of rightsholders with the needs of the public who wish to use copyrighted works in creative and educational ways.

 

The Australian Law Reform Commission recommends fair use, Europe next?

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With the EU consultation on a review of the European Copyright rules still ongoing (the new extended deadline is the 5th of March) it is nice to see that some other countries are apparently making progress with their national copyright reform agendas. One of the most interesting bits of news is coming out of Australia.

Australien-Law-Reform-Commission

The Australian Law Reform Commission has just published its report on Copyright and the Digital Economy. At the centerpiece of this report we find the recommendation to replace the existing system of purpose-based exceptions with a flexible fair use style exception. The proposal, on which the 1709 Blog has a very useful summary, combines a fair use clause with a number of illustrative purposes that aims at providing legal certainty for specific types of uses:

Under the proposed framework, determining whether a use is ‘fair’ requires the balancing of the same four factors as those that underpin the US fair use doctrine, ie:

  • the purpose and character of the use;
  • the nature of the copyright material;
  • the amount and substantiality of the part used; and
  • the effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyright material.

A more extensive (non-exhaustive) list of illustrative purposes than appears in the US statute is also recommended for inclusion. It covers:

  • research or study;
  • criticism or review;
  • parody or satire;
  • reporting news;
  • professional advice;
  • quotation;
  • non-commercial private use;
  • incidental or technical use;
  • library or archive use;
  • education; and
  • access for people with disability.

In the context of the ongoing EU consultation it is especially interesting to see a set of recommendations that try to combine the advantages of a fair use approach (flexibility and adaptability to new technological developments) with the advantages of an approach that relies on exceptions for certain clearly defined types of use (legal certainty for users that fall into these categories).

A number of the already published responses to the EU copyright consultation are suggesting a similar approach for Europe. These include the response by Copyright4Creativity (to which Communia has contributed) but also the responses by Europeana and by a number of Dutch cultural heritage institutions.

While we are waiting for the next steps of the European copyright reform process, the report by the the Australian Law Reform Commission, which draws on the outcomes of a similar public consultation, shows that a fair use approach certainly has its merits.

Fair use in Europe: Bernt Hugenholtz and Martin Senftleben in search of flexibilities

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In November Bernt Hugenholtz (IViR) and Martin Senftleben (VU Amsterdam) published a study that explores existing flexibilities within the European copyright regime that could be used to introduce the concept of fair use in Europe. This study follows on the heels of the Hargreaves Review, which examined the possibility of introducing a fair use exception in the UK.

In his report Hargreaves concluded that while it is highly desirable to introduce more open-ended flexibilities into UK copyright law, ‘significant difficulties would arise in any attempt to transpose US style Fair Use into European law.’ (Hargreaves, p.47). Instead of recommending the introduction of a Fair Use exception, Hargreaves looks at the benefits that a Fair Use exception provides and concludes that it is time to explore…

‘… with our EU partners a new mechanism in copyright law to create a built-in adaptability to future technologies which, by definition, cannot be foreseen in precise detail by today’s policy makers. This latter change will need to be made at EU level, as it does not fall within the current exceptions permitted under EU law. […] We therefore recommend below that the Government should press at EU level for the introduction of an exception allowing uses of a work enabled by technology which do not directly trade on the underlying creative and expressive purpose of the work (this has been referred to as “non-consumptive” use). (Hargreaves, p.47)

While Hugenholtz and Senftleben seem to embrace these conclusions, their study does not deal with introducing additional flexibilities into the European copyright system. Instead they have set out to explore existing room for more flexibility within the system. This system consists of the EU’s 2001 Information Society Directive (a.k.a ‘Copyright Directive), it’s 27 implementations into the national laws of the EU member states, and the WIPO internet treaties.

In their paper Hugenholtz and Senftleben argue that the current European copyright system provides ample room to create more flexible exceptions. According to them, member states seeking to provide more opportunities to users of copyright protected works are well advised to exploit these inherent flexibilities. Where the introduction of new exceptions at the EU level, as advocated by Hargreaves, would only come into effect after a multi-year legislative undertaking with an all but guaranteed outcome, working with existing flexibilities provides those member states who wish to introduce changes a much quicker route to achieve this objective.Continue reading →