Over the next five years, we need to remove the barriers that prevent knowledge institutions from fulfilling their public mission in the digital environment. Specifically, we need a targeted legislative intervention – a Digital Knowledge Act –  that enables knowledge institutions to offer the same services online as offline.

Such a regulation would require a few surgical interventions in copyright law, such as the introduction of a unified research exception (see our Policy Recommendation #9) and an EU-wide e-lending right (see our Policy Recommendation #10). However, it would mostly involve measures that fall outside of the scope of recent copyright reform discussions.

Above all, we’re envisioning a number of safeguards that would protect knowledge institutions against the abuse of property rights. Due to the complex and fragmented state of European copyright law, many institutions shy away from fully exercising their usage rights. We believe that an exemption from liability for those who act in good faith and believe that their activities are legal would mitigate this chilling effect (see our Policy Recommendation #17).

Another limiting factor for knowledge institutions in the digital realm are unfair licensing conditions. We believe that rightsholders should be obliged to license works under reasonable conditions to libraries as well as educational and research institutions.

Finally, knowledge institutions should be allowed to circumvent technological protection measures where locks prevent legitimate access and use of works, such as uses covered by limitations and exceptions (see our Policy Recommendation #13).

These demands are far from new and even the idea of a Digital Knowledge Act has been floating around in Brussels policy circles for a long time. Now it is up to the incoming legislators to show that they have the political will to tackle these problems in a comprehensive manner to unlock the full potential of Europe’s knowledge institutions.

The post A Digital Knowledge Act for Europe appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Open letter to the European Parliament

Dear Members of the European Parliament,

This week, on December 12, the European Parliament is scheduled to vote on an own-initiative report on the implementation of the 2018 Geo-blocking Regulation, including for audio-visual content. The IMCO Committee adopted the report on October 25, 2023, with opinions from CULT and JURI, through the support of a broad, cross-party majority. We urge you to follow the committee’s vote, adopt the report and pave the way for a revision of the Geo-blocking Regulation during the Parliament’s ‘24-’29 term.

With regard to audiovisual content, the report “highlights potential benefits for consumers, notably in the availability of a wider choice of content across borders” (p. 4). It also asks for a report of the Commission’s stakeholder dialogue on the subject to be made public and presented to the Parliament.

Despite the report’s balanced nature, it has come under attack by rightsholders from the audio-visual industries. Over the course of the past weeks, the Creativity Works! coalition and others have engaged in a massive campaign against the report, advancing a number of false or overblown claims to undermine it, which can be easily debunked:

Misleading claim 1: Ending Geo-blocking of audio-visual content would harm “15 million creative sector jobs” and “jeopardise a €640 billion industry.”

There is no independent study that proves this statement. Contrary to what part of the copyright industry claims, the IMCO report does not challenge territorial licensing. In fact, it reaffirms the need to preserve it. What IMCO suggests – and we support – is that consumers and citizens should not be denied access to Europe’s rich cultural diversity. Territorial protectionism does not benefit anyone but incumbent industries profiteering from the unjustified partition of the Single Market.

Misleading claim 2: The IMCO report threatens territorial licensing and calls for EU-wide licensing for audiovisual services which would be prohibitively expensive for smaller players and limit cultural diversity in Europe.

This statement is factually incorrect as the IMCO report at no point makes any reference to prohibiting or discouraging territorial licensing. On the contrary, the need to safeguard territorial licensing is mentioned repeatedly throughout the report. Further, there are no demands to instate a system of EU-wide licences. Any predictions for the future of the European audio-visual sector based on these claims are severely misguided and paint a deceiving picture of the IMCO report.

While the campaign by Creativity Works paints a dire picture of the audiovisual sector, should the legislator follow the report, there is little substance to these claims. Denying the people access to culture, by contrast, is not in your, or anyone’s, interest. We encourage you to vote with confidence in favour of the report.

Signed,

COMMUNIA Association for the Public Domain

Creative Commons

Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN)

Vrijschrift

Wikimedia Deutschland

Xnet, Institute for Democratic Digitalisation

The post Open letter on geo-blocking: Denying people access to culture benefits no-one appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Over the past few weeks, rightholder organisations united in the Creativity Works! Coalition have started a massive campaign attempting to neuter one of the core recommendations contained in the report: A request to the European Commission to undertake “a comprehensive revision of the Geo-blocking Regulation by 2025 the latest, with a particular view on an inclusion of audiovisual services in the scope of the Regulation.”

How is it possible that such a seemingly procedural request about the review of a piece of legislation is provoking such a strong reaction from rightholders? A campaign that is headlined by the following statement that features prominently on the campaign website:

Geo-blocking is one of the foundations for Europe’s creative and cultural sectors, providing Europeans with the means to create, produce, showcase, publish, distribute and finance diverse, high-quality and affordable content.

The idea that denying people access to culture is a “foundation for Europe’s creative and cultural sectors” is of course a rather disturbing one, but points right at the heart of the problem that the IMCO report is trying to address.¹ As long as AV rightholders do not even see that denying people access to cultural productions — that they want to pay for! — is nothing but blatant discrimination based on geographical location, requiring a regulatory intervention.

After having gotten a free pass when the original geo-blocking resolution was adopted, the upcoming review must now include an effort to bring AV services within the scope of the regulation to end this unjustified and counterproductive practice.

What the AV sector is doing with this its current campaign is trying to prevent EU lawmakers from reviewing the regulation, while no-one outside of the creative industries is paying attention, because they know very well that their arguments against inclusion do not have much to stand on.

A bit of history

So how did we get here? The 2018 Geo-blocking Regulation was adopted to make an end to unjustified geographical restrictions in the sale of goods and services within the EU. It addressed the problem of so-called “geo-blocking” — the baseless discrimination of customers accessing such services from other member states — with the aim to facilitate access to cross-border offers within the EU’s internal market. The directive contains a number of exceptions to this principle, one of these excludes audio-visual services from its scope. This exception has been the result of intense lobbying by the AV sector, which had argued that the underlying business models allowing the sector to thrive rely on territorial copyright licensing and that in order to make such licensing work in the online environment, online services must be able to block access from unlicensed territories.

In 2020, the European Commission published its first evaluation report covering the first 18 months of implementation of the Regulation. Regarding a possible extension of the scope of the Regulation to audio-visual content, the report highlighted potential benefits for consumers, (the availability of a wider choice of content across borders) but also identified a potential impact that such an extension would have on the overall dynamics of the audio-visual sector. The report did not contain specific suggestions or a concrete timeline to revise the Regulation, instead it identified a need to further assess the situation.

As a follow up of the evaluation report, the Commission launched a stakeholders dialogue on cross-border availability and access to audiovisual content across the EU. COMMUNIA has been part of this stakeholder dialogue (as one of only three organisations representing consumers and the public interest) which had the objective to let stakeholders propose concrete, non legislative, measures to improve the online availability and cross-border access to audiovisual works across the EU. Most, if not all, of the organisations that now campaign against the adoption of the IMCO report also participated in this stakeholder dialogue. Throughout the stakeholder dialogue, these organisations mainly sought to undermine the process by questioning the legitimacy of the process and stating that geo-blocking is essential to their financing models. While the stakeholder dialogue resulted in a number of proposals (including one from us), none of the organisations representing rightholders submitted any proposals aimed at improving cross border access. Instead they asked for more funding and tried to deflect the discussion towards the non-issue of “findability” of legal content (something the current campaign attempts as well).

In other words, the very same organisations that successfully sabotaged the stakeholder dialogue aimed at finding non-legislative solutions for geo-blocking of audio visual content are now lobbying against having EU lawmakers take another look at the issue.

But what is really at stake?

If you have to believe the campaign website set up by the Creativity Works! Coalition, then ending Geo-blocking of AV content would harm “15 million creative sector jobs” and “jeopardise a €640 billion industry.” These numbers are, even by the vastly inflated Brussels lobbying standards, simply absurd as they imply that the entire European Creative and Cultural Industries would be affected by a possible inclusion of AV services in the scope of the Geo-blocking Regulation — something that is obviously not true.²

It is true that territorial licensing arrangements play an important part in the financing arrangements for audiovisual productions (something that we have acknowledged in our submission for the stakeholder dialogue). However this does not mean that in order to preserve the ability to licence it is necessary to geo-block access to AV works from unlicensed territories within the EU.

Most of the claims about economic and cultural damage made by the CW! campaign find their origin in the idea that the IMCO report would require the AV sector to abandon territorial licensing, which is something the IMCO report does not propose. On the contrary, the need to safeguard territorial licensing is mentioned repeatedly throughout the report.

The report also does not call for a shift towards an EU-wide licensing for audiovisual services. However the CW! Campaign repeatedly points to the costs of such EU-wide licenses as the basis for its predictions of further consolidation in the industry that would lead to less cultural diversity.

Another aspect of the report that is under attack by the CW! Coalition is the fact that the report makes a link between increasing demands for cross-border access to AV by consumers and the increased use of VPNs, which allows them to circumvent geo-blocking. Here. the industry would very much prefer the report not to describe existing consumer behaviour that does not align with the picture of reality that they would like to see.³

As a result, one of the core insights of the IMCO report, that as a consequence, the adaptation of existing business models to the changing environment is needed both for consumers and businesses is once again at the risk of being ignored. Rightholders are seeking to get this conclusion removed from the report because the stakeholders on the supply side of the AV sector have again decided that rather than adapting to and working with consumer expectations, they can rely on their considerable lobby power to preserve the status quo that they have gotten comfortable with.

The European Parliament should resist caving in to this ongoing campaign against the IMCO report, and support the report’s call for an evidence-based revision of the Geo-Blocking Regulation in the next mandate. Contrary to what the CW! Campaign wants us to believe, this would neither mean the end of territorial licensing, nor the demise of the European Cultural and Creative Industries and it would also certainly not lead to less cultural diversity. If done well, ending geo-blocking would provide all Europeans with more legal access to a more diverse offering of AV content and a thriving cultural sector that can finally stop claiming that denying people access to culture is in anyone’s interest.

Endnotes

1. It seems that the creators if the campaign are at least marginally aware of this given that a position paper published by the campaign attempts — somewhat cringe worthy — to reframe “geo-blocking” as “geo-enabling”.
2. The numbers used by the campaign come from a 2021 EY study that defines the Cultural and Creative Industries as the combination of the following sectors: Advertising, Architecture, Audiovisual, Books, Music, Newspapers and magazines, Performing arts, Radio, Videogames and Visual arts. A substantial proportion of these has nothing to do with audiovisual content and geo-blocking is relevant only in a very small sub section of these sectors.
3. This is reminiscent of multiple exchanges during the stakeholder dialogue during which mentions of piracy as a rational response to being denied lawful access to a desired cultural good, were met with horrified responses from rightholders demanding that mentions of illegal acts should not be permissible in the context of the stakeholder dialogue.

The post Denying people access to culture is in no-one’s interest – let’s pave the way for a revision of the Geo-blocking Regulation! appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Participate in our virtual COMMUNIA salon on 12th of December, from 1500h to 1630 CET, to find out, and discuss the implementation of the DSM Directive in (almost) all EU Member States with our panel of experts.

Joining us for the ceremony will be Christina Angelopoulos, Felix Reda, Paul Keller and Teresa Nobre who will share their views and present their research on the implementation process across the EU.

If you want to find out our implementation rankings and see whether any Member State has received the coveted “douze points” or if you just need an excuse to get in the Eurovision mood before May 2024, register now and we will send you a Zoom link for the event.

Disclaimer: Clicking on this link will direct you to a Google Form and may lead to data being collected by and shared with third parties. Proceed only if you agree.

The post COMMUNIA Salon: Eurovision DSM Contest Afterparty appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

As discussed in greater detail in our Policy Paper #15, COMMUNIA deems it essential that the flexibilities for text-and-data mining enshrined in Articles 3 and 4 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive are upheld. For this approach to work in practice, we welcome practical initiatives for greater transparency around AI training data to understand whether opt-outs are being respected.

The full statement is provided below:

Statement on Transparency in the AI Act

The undersigned are civil society organizations advocating in the public interest, and representing  knowledge users and creative communities.

We are encouraged that the Spanish Presidency is considering how to tailor its approach to foundation models more carefully, including an emphasis on transparency. We reiterate that copyright is not the only prism through which reporting and transparency requirements should be seen in the AI Act.

General transparency responsibilities for training data

Greater openness and transparency in the development of AI models can serve the public interest and facilitate better sharing by building trust among creators and users. As such, we generally support more transparency around the training data for regulated AI systems, and not only on training data that is protected by copyright.

Copyright balance

We also believe that the existing copyright flexibilities for the use of copyrighted materials as training data must be upheld. The 2019 Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market and specifically its provisions on text-and-data mining exceptions for scientific research purposes and for general purposes provide a suitable framework for AI training. They offer legal certainty and strike the right balance between the rights of rightsholders and the freedoms necessary to stimulate scientific research and further creativity and innovation.

Proportionate approach

We support a proportionate, realistic, and practical approach to meeting the transparency obligation, which would put less onerous burdens on smaller players including non-commercial players and SMEs, as well as models developed using FOSS, in order not to stifle innovation in AI development. Too burdensome an obligation on such players may create significant barriers to innovation and drive market concentration, leading the development of AI to only occur within a small number of large, well-resourced commercial operators.

Lack of clarity on copyright transparency obligation

We welcome the proposal to require AI developers to disclose the copyright compliance policies followed during the training of regulated AI systems. We are still concerned with the lack of clarity on the scope and content of the obligation to provide a detailed summary of the training data. AI developers should not be expected to literally list out every item in the training content. We maintain that such level of detail is not practical, nor is it necessary for implementing opt-outs and assessing compliance with the general purpose text-and-data mining exception. We would welcome further clarification by the co-legislators on this obligation. In addition, an independent and accountable entity, such as the foreseen AI Office, should develop processes to implement it.

Signatories

• COMMUNIA
• Creative Commons
• Wikimedia Europe

The post Statement on Transparency in the AI Act appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Over the course of 20 minutes, Teresa walks the listeners through some of the key questions when it comes to the training of generative AI models and how it affects the text and data mining (TDM) exception laid down in Articles 3 and 4 of the EU Copyright Directive (see also our Policy Paper #15).

Disclaimer: Playback of the embedded video establishes a connection to YouTube and may lead to data being collected by and shared with third parties. Proceed only if you agree.

While the Directive clearly establishes the right to mine online content and use it to train machine learning algorithms, this right hinges on the possibility for rightsholders to opt out their works if the activity takes place in a commercial context. A key issue we are currently seeing is that there is a lack of transparency around the training of generative AI models, which makes it impossible to tell whether such opt-outs are being respected or not.

In the discussion, Teresa highlighted the need for more transparency regarding opt-outs but also across the copyright ecosystem as a whole. COMMUNIA has long advocated for the creation of a database of copyrighted works, which would contribute to managing the system of opt-outs.

The discussion ended with a call upon the European Commission to provide guidance and lead technical discussions towards establishing a clear, reliable and transparent framework for opt-outs for TDM (see also Open Future’s recent policy brief on this issue). Only through dialogue between the concerned stakeholders, led by an independent third party, will we be able to establish best practices that uphold Articles 3 and 4 of the Copyright Directive while providing a fair and balanced framework for the training of machine learning models.

The post We need to talk about AI and transparency! appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

We discuss the considerations of the use of copyright-protected works and other protected subject matter as training data for generative AI models, and provide two recommendations for lawmakers. Here, we leave aside questions relating to the output of AI models (e.g. whether the output of generative AI models is copyrightable and in how far such output can be infringing exclusive rights), which we will address in another, yet to be published paper.

This paper is without prejudice to the position of COMMUNIA or individual COMMUNIA members regarding this discussion in other jurisdictions.

The post Using Copyrighted Works for Teaching the Machine – New Policy Paper appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

We offer you an opportunity to join our advocacy efforts to advance cutting-edge copyright reform and work with a network of activists, researchers, and other practitioners in Europe and the United States.

This is a remote position, but you must be located in the Brussels area and should be able to attend meetings in Brussels on short notice.

It is possible to work part-time, but you should be available to work at least 24h/week for us.

Primary responsibilities

As a Policy Advisor, your primary responsibility will be to promote COMMUNIA’s policy objectives in the EU context and expand COMMUNIA’s network in the Brussels policy space. In addition, you will work on our public communication efforts.

Policy

• Represent COMMUNIA and promote COMMUNIA’s policy goals at consultations, hearings and events;
• Work with COMMUNIA’s directors and core team members to draft responses to consultations, policy papers and other policy documents;
• Expand COMMUNIA’s network in the Brussels policy space;
• Track relevant developments in copyright and related policy areas of interest to COMMUNIA.

Communication

• Work with COMMUNIA’s directors and core team members to create communication materials, including blog posts, social media content, policy handouts and newsletters;
• Plan, organise and run in-person, hybrid and virtual events, including promotion and follow-up communication with participants and attendees.

Qualifications and skills

• University degree in political science, law, or related field;
• Strong identification with COMMUNIA’s mission and policy objectives;
• Relevant prior experience in the field;
• Basic knowledge of copyright and copyright-related challenges for users in general and in education, research and the cultural heritage sector;
• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to build/maintain a network in the Brussels policy space (prior experience in a similar position a plus);
• Good writing and communication skills (ability to speak and write concisely in different formats and for different audiences, blogging, social media etc.);
• Good knowledge of the workings of the European institutions and EU policy processes;
• Project management skills (structured and target-oriented approach, good time management, experience with online/offline/hybrid event planning a plus);
• Proficient computer skills (familiarity with the Google suite and Slack or similar frameworks, knowledge of WordPress a plus);
• Excellent level of English (native or fluent). Good command of French is an advantage.

Application process

Please apply by sending your CV and motivation letter to work@communia-association.org. The deadline for applications is January 31st, 2023.

Only applicants with a valid residence and work permit for Belgium will be considered.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at the same email address.

Further information

Salary

We offer a salary starting at €55.000/year for a full-time position commensurate with relevant skills and experience.

Work environment and location

COMMUNIA is an international association incorporated under Belgian law that advocates for policies that expand the Public Domain and increase access to culture and knowledge. We are driven by our public interest mission and we have a proven track record of impact in EU and national legislation.

COMMUNIA is a fully distributed organisation with members in Europe and the US. This position is in a remote working environment, but based in the Brussels area. Availability for occasional travel and high-speed broadband access are required. A laptop is supplied.

We are an equal opportunities employer and we are committed to ensuring equality and promoting diversity. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, or any other legally protected characteristic.

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy applies to job applicants (or “you”). COMMUNIA will collect and use your personal data during the recruitment process, to manage the process and reach a hiring decision. This includes assessing your skills and qualifications for this particular role, verifying your information and communicating with you.

We collect only personal data that you have provided to us in your application, data from interviews (if applicable), and data provided to us by your referees (if applicable). We may also obtain data relevant to your professional life from publicly available sources for the purpose of confirming the accuracy of the information presented by you. We base this processing on our legitimate interest to build a decision base in order to reach a hiring decision.

If you are accepted for a role at COMMUNIA, your personal data will be included in our staff records. If you are not successful, your personal data will be deleted from our records within three months from the application deadline.

We take care to allow access to your personal data only to those who are involved in the recruitment process. We will not share any personal data with other third parties ​​unless we have a legal obligation to do so.

You have the right to access, correct, update, or request deletion of your personal data from our records. You also have the right to object to, or restrict, processing of your personal data, as well as to data portability, and to report any misuse of your personal data.

If you have any questions or requests relating to this Privacy Policy, please contact us at communia@communia-association.org.

The post We Are Looking for a Policy Advisor appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Today, the A2K Coalition is launching its website with demands for education, research and cultural heritage.

Access to knowledge is not enjoyed equally across the world. Crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate emergency, highlight the barriers that the current copyright system poses for those who learn, teach, research, create, preserve or seek to enjoy the world’s cultural heritage.

The international copyright system has failed to keep pace with advancing technology and practices, including for digital and cross-border activities. Consequently, we have been unable to seize the possibilities that exist to promote access to, and use of, knowledge to fulfill human rights and achieve more equitable, inclusive and sustainable societies.

The members of the A2K Coalition represent educators, researchers, students, libraries, archives, museums, other knowledge users and creative communities around the globe. Our individual missions are varied but we all share a vision of a fair and balanced copyright system.

In addition to our mission statement and demands, the A2K Coalition website features evidence to substantiate our claims. Three maps track the state of copyright limitations and exceptions for online education, text and data mining, and preservation across most countries in the world. Currently, only the text and data mining map is fully implemented, but the maps for online education and preservation will follow soon. The website is available in English, French and Spanish language versions.

We invite you to explore the A2K website and spread the word about the A2K Coalition.

The post Global Civil Society Coalition Promotes Access to Knowledge appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Over these three meetings it became increasingly clear that the majority of the invited stakeholders were not interested in working with the Commission on improving cross border access to audiovisual content in the EU. With the exception of the organisations representing users (apart from COMMUNIA these included BEUC and the Federal Union of European Nationalities) and a few dissident voices within the AV sector the representatives of AV rightholders, distributors, producers and creators insisted that the current system of territorial copyright licensing is working well and that it is essential for the financial sustainability of the European audio-visual sector as a whole.

According to them, the fact that this system also leads to widespread geo-blocking and deprives many Europeans of access to cultural works that are often (at least partially) funded with public money does not justify an intervention in the “well-balanced” business models that underpin AV production in Europe. In addition, they argue that it should be up to the market to increase cross-border access to AV works in the EU (while at the same time lobbying for increased EU support for the production and distribution of AV works).

Request for proposals

At the beginning of this year — after having been shown the cold shoulder by the AV sector — the Commission put the stakeholder dialogue on hold to reconsider its approach. Then, in June of this year, the Commission sent out a letter to all participants in the stakeholder dialogue inviting them to:

… submit proposals for concrete actions or roadmap presenting the steps you intend to take in order to contribute to improving the online availability and cross-border access to audiovisual works across the EU. We would welcome your proposals for commitments by Friday 23rd September 2022.

Adding that after assessing the proposals received, the Commission would

… convene a final meeting of the dialogue in the autumn in order to formally adopt them as participants’ commitments.

Last week, in response to this invitation, we submitted a proposal for a fallback TVOD service for publicly funded AV works. Here, we develop the concept for an independent not-for-profit platform that would ensure the availability of AV productions – that have received public funding – in all member states of the European Union. 

The platform that we are proposing would be a Transactional Video on Demand platform (TVOD – industry parlance for a pay per view platform) and as such would be something that can generate extra revenue for the producers of films made available via the platform. It is not a proposal to make these works available for free.

Our proposal focuses on AV productions that have received public funding — which is the vast majority of AV productions made in Europe — because here the moral and cultural imperatives to make them available across all EU member states is the strongest. Implementing this proposal, which in itself accepts the current practice of exclusive territorial licensing, and — ironically — relies on geo-blocking as a mechanism for this, would be an important step towards a future without structural geo-blocking of AV works that are available in the EU.

We are looking forward to discussing our proposal with other stakeholders in the upcoming meeting of the stakeholder dialogue.

The post Our proposal for ending geo-blocking of audiovisual works in the EU appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.