You can read the full letter here.

We shared suggestions on three main issues that we want to change in the Commission-text on the education exception, which will be the basis of the vote on 12 September:

#1: Support a broad definition of educational establishments

Unfortunately, the European Commission’s proposal does not include all organisations where educational activities take place, as only formal educational establishments are covered by the exception. We note that the European lifelong-learning model underlines the value of informal and non-formal education including continuous professional development conducted in the workplace. This takes place in collaboration with, among others, cultural heritage institutions and NGOs. All these are excluded from the education exception.

We therefore ask members of the European Parliament to support amendments that clarify that all organisations where educational activities, both formal and non-formal, take place are covered by the education exception.

#2: Support a flexible definition of the location of use

In today’s Europe, educational activities are legitimately provided in many locations and through various means of communication. The European Commission propose to limit digital uses to secure institutional networks and to the premises of an educational establishment. As a consequence, educators will not develop and conduct educational activities in other facilities such as libraries and museums, and they will not be able to use modern means of communication, such as emails and the cloud.

We therefore ask members of the European Parliament to support amendments that clarify that the exception applies wherever education is provided under the care of an educational establishment, and furthermore clarify that the definition of electronic environments is broad enough to include email, the cloud and school websites.

#3: Support the exception over a license priority

Educators should not need to be lawyers to understand what they can and cannot do. We believe in transparency. Unfortunately, the European Commission does not follow these principles when proposing that licenses can overrule the educational exception. As a consequence, educators will depend on conditions proposed by license holders. This will lead to additional costs in the majority of European countries, where the exception is non-remunerated, and to a fragmented legal copyright framework.We do not support such a mechanism and advocate for a strong education exception that cannot be replaced by licenses.

However, to accommodate the models already in place in the Nordic countries, we ask members of the European Parliament to support amendments that clarify that the license priority can only apply to the extent that equivalent collective licensing agreements authorising the acts described in the exception are included, and the licenses are tailored to the needs and specificities of educational establishments are mutually agreed by the licensor and the licensee.

It is essential that social partners in education, education trade unions and employers in education, are consulted on these issues. Yet, we would also emphasise that this is not just a concern to educational stakeholders, but to all citizens and society at large. Access to quality education is a prerequisite for the development of prosperous societies, and part of European culture.

We look to the vote on September 12th as an opportunity to make the education exception right for the 21st century. If you would like to know more on what you can do to support a good copyright for education, we invite you to have a look at our Copyright for Education site and/or get in contact with COMMUNIA directly: communia@communia-association.org.

The post New Joint Letter: Asking for a better copyright for education appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

If you would like to join COMMUNIA at CopyCamp please know that the call for speakers is open until until July 31st. You can find more information about that here.

5 Tracks at CopyCamp 2018

Every year CopyCamp has a different focus, for this edition five different thematic tracks have been developed.

Author social security
How to acknowledge and remunerate authors? How to help them to negotiate contracts and secure their career and financial stability in the long run, also during retirement? What are the perspectives of alternative compensation schemes?

The history of copyright
It is the hundredth anniversary of the modern Polish copyright and industrial property law. The evolution of the law has been accompanied by the evolution of cultural activities regulated by these laws. Are there any lessons that can be drawn? What has changed in culture that the law should address better?

EU copyright reform
Is the new directive #ACTA2? We need to have a meaningful discussion on how to fix copyright that transcends such simplifications. CopyCamp has been the place for such a discussion since 2012. This year you are more than invited to share your proposal for the copyright for the future.

Blockchain perspectives
How can technology be used to benefit authors and their audiences? Is blockchain the answer? Will it live up to the expectations? Most importantly – what exactly does blockchain fix in copyright, and whom it will empower?

Reuse of heritage archives
Heritage is an important source for appropriation artists, who use it to retell old stories and build their own stories by reusing existing culture. There are not just legal, but also ethical questions in this area. We invite the GLAM sector to share their experiences from digitization and reuse, and we also invite authors and researchers to openly talk about their needs when it comes to building upon heritage.

About the conference

CopyCamp 2018 is organised in partnership with the Patent Office of the Republic of Poland, Society of Authors ZAiKS, Polish National Film Archive–Audiovisual Institute, and Google Poland. It is supported by EDRi, COMMUNIA, Open Knowledge International, and Open Forum Europe.

The event is open for everyone and entrance is free.

The post CopyCamp 2018 open for proposals appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

JURI gave educators across the EU a gift in the shape of an improved educational exception – with a poison pill inside. The Compromise Amendment (CAM6) proposed by Rapporteur Voss was accepted. We are happy that the Commission’s flawed proposal for an exception that secures digital uses for education purposes has been fixed. Educators are given clarity about uses in digital environments, and the scope of the exception has been increased beyond educational establishments and their premises. There is also improved text that makes a contractual override of the exception impossible.

Yet, the poison pill remains: the Commission’s proposal in article 4(2) to give priority to licenses over the exception was adopted. We managed to secure improvement in the phrasing of this license priority: the licenses have to be tailored to the needs and specificities of the educational establishments. Nevertheless, a Member State can decide to switch off the exception, provided that a licensing scheme is in place in a given country. This means that over the coming years we could benefit from a new exception only to see it disappear – which would leave educators depending on remunerated licensing schemes.

Problems with license priority go beyond education

Licensing priority spells problems, not just for educators. It creates a precedent for overrides to any public interest copyright law exceptions. As such, it is a great victory for rightsholders. This reminds us of the “Licenses of Europe” process, in which the Commission and rightsholders tried to convince everyone that licensing is a much better tool for securing user rights than exceptions to copyright. While they failed to do so then, they seem to have won some ground in the copyright directive.

This dangerous precedent for users’ rights is even more alarming when we consider that it goes against the CJEU ruling on the issue of license priority. The Court of Justice of the European Union knew that giving priority to license offers was indefensible, as it would negate much of the substance and effectiveness of the exception or limitation and it would deny the user the right to benefit from the exception. Thus, the Court decided that the 3-step test did not require them to allow rightsholders to unilaterally force users to stop relying on the copyright exception when those rightsholders offered to conclude a licensing agreement with them. This decision represented a major win for users’ rights, and more so because in the US users may not be able to rely on fair use when reasonable licensing options are available.

If we round up today’s vote for education we are happy about the improvements to the exception but mourn what could have been and fear the consequences of this license priority. The fight is not over yet. There will possibly – likely – be a plenary vote in the Parliament where this article, as well as the other disappointing results on articles 11 & 13, could still be challenged.

The post JURI vote results: a better educational exception with a poisoned pill within appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

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.

What we can’t let educators share

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. KlasCement currently has a team of about 10 validators checking for copyright mistakes in the educational materials. They have to disapprove 15% of all shared content because of a (possible) copyright violation.

Often the educators write their own texts, but they use single images from the web to illustrate the assignments. The members note that it is very difficult to trace the owner of the images, because the images are copied online so many times before. Hans noted that sometimes educators try and fix the mistakes and re-share, but often an educator can’t or won’t and the resource remains unshared. He notes that it is very difficult for its members to understand what is, and what is not allowed. For example a picture of the Eiffel tower by day is okay, if you took the photo yourself, but at night it is supposedly a copyright violation because of the light show.

How copyright affects the work of history educators

Steven Segers, deputy director of EUROCLIO shared from a survey about copyright he did amongst its members, gathering over 100 reactions from 35 mostly European Countries. For example, a history educator from Italy noted:

“I often need to show movies, documentaries or parts of them in my classes, but I risk every time to be fined. I do it anyway, but I am always worried.”

Steven remarked that it is unwanted for an educator to be scared every time he uses visual resources in the classroom, with the ambition to simply educate the students the best way they can. The respondents of the survey also wrote that they simply do not know whether they have violated copyright, as they do not know enough about the subject.

Steven: “We believe that copyright regulations should enable and protect educators to deliver the best education for their students. What we need is a copyright exception for education, that is easy to understand, that applies in all EU countries, and is suited to the realities of education.”

Not having this is a serious downside on the quality of education as:

“dealing with copyright takes time away from the core business of teaching.”

The role of libraries in education

Next we heard from Maria Rehbinder, member of the Copyright Working group of LIBER and legal counsel at Aalto University. She noted:

“We advocate for a mandatory exception to allow using works or other subject-matter in digital teaching activities, including online and across borders. We are the voice of thousands of educators, researchers innovators, libraries and scholarly institutions.”

She spoke about the situation in her home country of Finland: universities purchase an extended collective license allowing for educational use. Together these universities pay about 4 million euros a year to the collecting society Kopiosto, who represents publishers and other rightholders. Materials can only be used by course participants and have to be removed after the course, which limits the use of digital materials.

Kopiosto conducted, together with the university, a study in 2015-2016 on digital university materials. From the study they learned that educators, lecturers, researchers and teachers who create digital educational resources at university, write their own text to their slides. The copyrighted resources teachers use and need are images to illustrate their text.

According to said study, 47% of third party materials used by teachers in their resources are single images found online – and not images found on textbooks or otherwise sourced by publishers. Nevertheless, publishers are getting compensation for those images that they have not published. That happens because the authors of those materials are not necessarily members of Kopisko and, therefore, the licensing fees paid by universities to Kopisko are not being redistributed by them.

Maria also noted the legal uncertainty as related to the licensing approach in Finland, especially the recent Soulier and Doke CJEU case. Overall, she prefers an exception based approach, above a licensing based approach.

Copyright and Education in Europe

The last speaker was Teresa Nobre (COMMUNIA) who shared on her recent research on 15 everyday cases in 15 countries. She presented several scenarios and confronted them with the Commission’s proposal, highlighting best practices and problems that will remain unsolved if the Commission’s proposal is not substantially changed.

For instance, Teresa noted that most of the countries analysed do not prevent teachers from using email, cloud services, and other modern tools to share certain educational materials with their students. The Commission’s proposal could follow the example.

Another highlight coming from Teresa’s research is that the majority of the countries under analysis does not discriminate against the person or entity running the educational activity, focusing solely on the educational purpose of the use. Still, several countries only cover formal educational establishments. An amendment to the Commission’s proposal would be necessary in order not to leave museums, libraries and other providers of non-commercial education behind in those countries.

We were happy to see many people engaging in the discussion during the event, and would like to thank MEP Schaake for the opportunity to discuss this topic in depth. If you would like to know more about COMMUNIA’s position on the educational exception, you can find our position paper here. If you would like to know more about what we do to improve copyright, please message us on info@communia-assocation.org

The post What educators need from copyright reform appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

For education, the Scottish MEP has aims that strongly resonate with us, as she noted in her introduction:

Also, in the field of the use of works and other subject matter in teaching activities (Article 4), the Rapporteur believes that the exception should benefit not only all formal educational establishments in primary, secondary, vocational and higher education, but also other organisations such as libraries and other cultural heritage institutions, providing non-formal or informal education. The Rapporteur believes that the best solution is to have a single and mandatory exception for all types of teaching, both digital and non-digital, formal and informal.

These are more-or-less the same points we make in our position paper on the draft directive. In it, we argue that ‘the devil is in the detail’. The analysis of MEP Stihler’s proposed amendments appears to require the same title. While we can do less than fully applaud her aims, there is some serious room for improvement in the actual proposed text. We appreciate amendments that strengthen the exception, but note at the same time that even the best exception will be broken if licensing solutions are favored by the legislator.

Education is not just ‘digital’ or ‘non-digital’

MEP Stihler elegantly re-phrases the title of article 4 in AM35 to ‘Use of works and other subject-matter in teaching activities’ from ‘…digital and cross-border teaching activities’. By doing so she removes the artificial barrier introduced by the Commission between ‘digital’ and ‘non-digital’ uses, which does not exist in the exception contained in the Information Society Directive for teaching and research. We applaud this. For legal clarity, and to reverse the chilling effect now present in educators using in-copyright material to illustrate their teaching, it is important to state what is and is not allowed. Having a barrier between ‘digital’ and ‘non-digital’ only makes sense from the perspective of the  (slow) historic progression of copyright law, not in the (rapidly changing) daily practice of educators.

Still licensing as the solution

Unfortunately MEP Stihler did not suggest to remove the much debated article 4(2) relating to the licensing override to the proposed exception. While she does introduce a welcome review mechanism to the availability of such licenses in three years after the date of entry of the Directive, we cannot emphasise enough that licenses are simply not the solution for education. Many educational institutions will be ill-placed to negotiate license terms or will be forced to accept the terms dictated by the licensor, while others will not even be able to consider purchasing a license, due to the costs involved.

Broadens the scope: but not far enough

We were happy to see that MEP Stihler broadens the scope of the exception to include cultural heritage institutions (CHI), as they take up an important role in education in Europe. However, we do not agree with only broadening the scope to CHI as she proposed in AM39. There are many other persons and institutions, such as NGO and programmes aimed at vocational training, that would very much benefit from being included in the exception, as the Rapporteur herself notes in her amendments for recital 15 and 16 of the proposed directive (AM 4 and 5). We argue that the best way forward in terms of scope of the exception is to put the education purpose forward, not the person or entity performing the education.

Great addition of ‘scientific research’

The Rapporteur also rectifies an oversight from the Commission by including the words ‘scientific research’ within the exception in AM36, as was the phrasing of the Information Society Directive exception. As our friends at LIBER have argued:

Since the activities of teaching and research intertwine inseparably at most universities and research organisations, the natural step is to propose a copyright exception for the purposes of teaching and research.

The much needed non-contractual override

Thankfully MEP Stihler also recognised the great value of the addition of a non contractual override provision in the education exception proposed, as she noted in AM38, in the same language used by the Commission in its proposal for the text and data mining exception in article 3 of the proposed directive. Rapporteur for CULT Marc Joulaud also already noted this in his draft opinion.

In short, while we applaud MEP Stihler’s aims for education and there are several positive proposals in her amendments. But we need to do better for education. For more information about what education needs, we refer to the joint letter on copyright reform for education, as well as the COMMUNIA position paper.

The post MEP Stihler means well for education, but there is serious room for improvement appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

You can find the full letter, including signatories here. 

We believe that educators should be provided with the autonomy necessary for them to give the best possible learning opportunities for students, and that students and other learners should have the freedom required for effective independent learning. The choice of resources that an educator uses should only be dependent on the need they see in their students. The current proposal from the European Commission does not meet these requirements. There however changes possible to the proposed directive that will create a copyright that supports education.

We have shared three concrete recommendations:

1. Remove reference to licenses

The European Commission’s efforts to harmonise digital education at the EU level will be of little consequence if member states can ultimately decide to subject the application of the exception to the availability of ‘adequate’ licenses. The proposal (article 4) does not clarify whether this covers important factors like if the license has a reasonable price, respects other exceptions and limitations, or even provides fair remuneration to the original author. The mere theoretical availability of a license is not enough for it to be workable in an education setting. The failure of the “Licenses for Europe” stakeholder dialogue, where non-legislative solutions for copyright problems were unsuccessfully discussed, suggests that licensing is not a solution that can replace legislative change. In particular, it cannot fulfil the role of a modernised set of exceptions which offers legal certainty for teachers and students across Europe. Many educational institutions will be ill-placed to negotiate license contracts (if they have the option at all), while others will not even be able to consider purchasing a license, due to the costs involved. We therefore recommend that the reference to licenses is removed from the exception.

2. Broaden scope of exception to educational purpose

We are also worried that the proposed new exception only applies to ‘educational establishments.’ Education is understood today as a lifelong process that is conducted by a multitude of institutions, formally and informally, and includes learners themselves. This was noted in the Commission Communication ”Making a European Area of Lifelong Learning a Reality” and the subsequent Council Resolution of 27 June 2002 on lifelong learning. Yet when defining copyright law, the European Commission fails to embrace its own lifelong learning approach by limiting the potential beneficiaries of the proposed exception to ‘educational establishments’. In doing so, the proposed exception will not lead to harmonisation of digital uses for the purposes of informal education, such as offered by museums, libraries, archives, professional associations, independent learning, and civil society organisations. Examples include education about the dangers of drugs that civil society organisations provide for teenagers, or the great educational programs offered by libraries that help Europeans embrace their local culture. This limitation would also exclude employees, apprenticeships, and practical learning as a part of vocational education at their company, which is a key part of Europe’s lifelong learning goal. We therefore propose that the beneficiaries of the exception will be broadened to include all persons and entities providing an educational activity.

3. Remove artificial barrier between digital and nondigital use

Lastly, we note that education does not rely solely on digital uses, and the problems and legal uncertainty that the education community faces goes beyond the digital and online environments. The European Commission’s proposal creates an artificial division between digital and analogue uses, adding unwanted complexity to a legal framework that is already difficult to grasp. By adding a mandatory exception for digital uses without making changes to the existing exception for non-digital ones – such as distributing texts or images to students, performing a play, or screening a film in class – the Commission’s proposal creates confusion instead of clarification. We therefore recommend that the Commission removes this artificial barrier between digital resources and printed paper for educational purposes to enable much needed clarity for educators and learners on all acts and materials needed for education.

We urge the MEPs working on this dossier to consider these recommendations from this group of supporters of quality education in Europe, to make sure that we will have a copyright that supports education. If you would like to know more about the letter, its recommendations or how we can fix copyright, please contact Lisette Kalshoven (lk@kl.nl).

Full list of supporters:

• Alliance for Open Education
• Associação Ensino Livre
• Association for Technology and Internet
• Centrul Pentru Inovare Publica
• Centrum Cyfrowe
• Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej
• COMMUNIA
• Creative Common Austria
• Creative Commons
• Creative Commons Portugal
• Electronic Information for Libraries
• EUROCLIO
• European Bureau of Library Information and Documentation Associations
• European University Association
• Europeana
• Fairkom Association
• Intellectual Property Institute, Slovenia
• International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
• Kennisland
• Koalicja Otwartej Edukacji
• Leuphana University of Lüneburg
• LIBER
• Media and Learning Association
• Muzeum Historii Polski
• Nexa Center for Internet & Society
• Open Education Working Group, Open Knowledge International
• Open Technologies Alliance-GFOSS
• Państwowe Muzeum Etnograficzne w Warszawie
• PL2020
• Szkoła z klasą (Poland)
• The European Association for Viewers Interests
• The European Multiple MOOC Aggregator (EMMA)
• The Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance
• Wikimedia UK

And the following individuals:

• André Isidoro Fernandes Esteves, Portugal
• Chris Morrison, Copyright and Licensing Compliance Officer, University of Kent, UK
• David Anderson-Evans, Chair, UUK-Guild HE Copyright Working Group, UK
• David Farley, University Librarian, University of Winchester, UK
• Dr Guido Noto La Diega
• Dr Maja Bogataj Jančič, LL.M., LL.M.
• Hans Põldoja, Estonia
• Inga-Lill Nilson, Sweden
• Jane Secker, Copyright and Digital Literacy Advisor, LSE, UK
• Kate Vasili, Copyright Officer, Middlesex University, UK
• Marcos Daniel Marado Torres, Portugal,
• Mart Laanpere, Estonia
• Monique Ritchie, Research Librarian and Copyright Officer, Brunel University London, UK
• Paula Simões, Portugal
• Peter Suber, Harvard University
• Ralph Weedon, Information Governance and Compliance Manager, University of Strathclyde, UK
• Teemu Leinonen, Finland

The post Clear statement from educational sector: we need a better copyright reform appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

COMMUNIA, together with other advocates of quality education in Europe, has developed a letter to members of the European Parliament. In the letter we express our concerns that the proposed directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market will make things worse for education. We make recommendations that would help copyright transform into copyright fit for modern, quality, and inclusive education and ask for amendments in line with these recommendations. Please read the full letter here.

Help us in supporting a better copyright for education

We want to gather wide support, so that we can impact the current copyright proposal. If you personally or your organisation wants to sign the letter, contact Lisette Kalshoven (lk@kl.nl). We accept additional signatories until February 6th 12:00 CET. We thank you for your support.

Right now the letter is supported by the following organisations:

• EUROCLIO
• COMMUNIA
• Creative Commons
• Creative Commons Portugal
• Creative Common Austria
• Fairkom Association
• Centrum Cyfrowe
• Kennisland
• Open Education Working Group, Open Knowledge International
• PL2020
• Alliance for Open Education
• Associação Ensino Livre
• Centrul Pentru Inovare Publica
• Electronic Information for Libraries
• Association for Technology and Internet
• Leuphana University of Lüneburg
• Nexa Center for Internet & Society
• Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej
• Szkoła z klasą (Poland)
• Państwowe Muzeum Etnograficzne
• Koalicja Otwartej Edukacji
• Muzeum Historii Polski
• Wikimedia UK
• Open Technologies Alliance-GFOSS
• Intelectual Property Institute, Slovenia
• European University Association
• LIBER
• The European Multiple MOOC Aggregator
• International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
• The European Association for Viewers Interests
• The Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance
• European Bureau of Library Information and Documentation Associations
• Europeana
• Media and Learning Association

And the following individuals:

• David Anderson-Evans, Chair, UUK-Guild HE Copyright Working Group, UK
• Jane Secker, Copyright and Digital Literacy Advisor, LSE, UK
• Chris Morrison, Copyright and Licensing Compliance Officer, University of Kent, UK
• Monique Ritchie, Research Librarian and Copyright Officer, Brunel University London, UK
• Kate Vasili, Copyright Officer, Middlesex University, UK
• David Farley, University Librarian, University of Winchester, UK
• Ralph Weedon, Information Governance and Compliance Manager, University of Strathclyde, UK
• Teemu Leinonen, Finland
• Mart Laanpere, Estonia
• Hans Põldoja, Estonia
• André Isidoro Fernandes Esteves, Portugal
• Marcos Daniel Marado Torres, Portugal,
• Dr Maja Bogataj Jančič, LL.M., LL.M.
• Paula Simões, Portugal
• Inga-Lill Nilson, Sweden
• Dr Guido Noto La Diega
• Peter Suber, Harvard University

The post Call for Signatories: A Better Copyright Reform for Education appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Leaving important players behind

Ansip writes about the important transition from solely physical education to embracing digital technologies. In the process, the patchwork of exceptions to copyright for educational purposes across Europe blocks much innovation in education:

Unfortunately, there are many differences around Europe in how these exceptions are applied, especially when it comes to using copyright-protected material in digital or online teaching activities.

Digital technologies are transforming the teaching and learning environment. They are being used more and more throughout education: laptops in the classroom to show video clips, interactive whiteboards to display webpages, for example.

But current EU law does not properly address digital’s significant presence and influence in the learning environment. It needs to catch up.

This makes it strange that the Commission’s definition of ‘learning environment’ is so limited to official educational establishments in the proposed directive. Education is understood today as a lifelong process that is conducted by a multitude of institutions, and even learners themselves. This was noted in the Commission Communication ”Making a European Area of Lifelong Learning a Reality” and the subsequent Council Resolution of 27 June 2002 on lifelong learning. Yet, when defining copyright law, the European Commission fails to embrace its own lifelong learning approach by limiting the potential beneficiaries of the proposed exception to ‘educational establishments’. 

In doing so, the proposed exception will leave unharmonised the digital uses for educational purposes made by other individuals and organisations, such as the great value that museums, libraries, archives, professional associations, and civil society organisations give to education. Think for example of education about the dangers of drugs that civil society organisations provide for teenagers, or the great educational programmes of libraries that help Europeans embrace their local culture. This limitation would also exclude employees, apprenticeships and practical learning as vocational education at their company, which is a key part of Europe’s lifelong learning goal.

Preference for licenses

Also in the proposed new exception is the licensing ‘opt out’ where member states can choose to rely on ‘adequate’ licenses instead of the exception. The failure of the Licenses for Europe process suggests that licensing cannot be a solution that can replace legislative change, and in particular the modernisation of the exceptions package. The EC efforts to harmonise digital education at the EU level will be of little consequence if member states can ultimately decide to subject the application of the exception to the availability of adequate licenses.

We may accept that Member States have the freedom to build on the existing arrangements concluded at national level. However, as noted by the CJEU in the TU Darmstadt versus Ulmer decision, the mere act of offering to conclude an adequate licensing agreement should not rule out the application of an exception. Many educational institutions will be ill-placed to negotiate license terms or will be forced to accept the terms dictated by the licensor (in the case of mass-market licenses), while others will not even be able to consider purchasing a license, due to the costs involved. Therefore, the lawmaker should not allow licenses to take precedence over an essential user right on the mere grounds that they are technically available in the market.

Ansip writes about “…simplifying a legally complex situation in the European Union so that students and teachers can feel confident and legally secure about using copyrighted material in digital education activities”. This rosy picture will not become reality if the exception has such a limited scope and licensing solutions are preferred. 

We need to make sure that when we update the copyright rules for education, we do not only think back to traditional education, but embrace all of the education that Europe has to offer. We need to broaden the exception to include this and remove the licensing references or we will leave behind education in Europe.

Let’s make sure we fix this for the entirety of education now, because as Ansip writes:

Almost one in four teachers said they came across copyright-related restrictions in their digital teaching activities at least once a week.

Read more about how we can improve copyright for education in COMMUNIA’s position paper: Commission’s proposal on education: the devil is in the details.

The post Ansip is forgetting about important parts of education appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

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.

The post VIDEO: experts on how to make copyright work again appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Exceptions represent the user rights in EU copyright

While over the years a number of studies have been undertaken to provide insight into the state of implementation of the possible exceptions, there was no easily accessible, up-to-date information resource about user rights across the European Union. In the past few months Kennisland collected and combined the information it could find from multiple sources and had the results reviewed by national experts. Information was gathered about whether an exception is implemented and whether the exception requires remuneration. The tool also includes links to national acts and any other comments on the specifics of the implementation.

User rights are not looking good

While the Commission, based on the recently leaked impact assessment and dito draft directive, aims to solve parts of this non-user friendly patchwork, it is not looking good. The draft directive provides for only a limited TDM exception that will scare away data start ups, and strange licensing requirements in a new additional exception for education. It also doesn’t do much to harmonise important exceptions for the daily lives of citizens (such as freedom of panorama), or cultural heritage institutions (to make out-of-commerce works available). We don’t feel that the forthcoming directive will at all champion a true ‘Digital Single European Market’.

Kennisland, and COMMUNIA with them, believes that a single market means that we need to ensure that all participants in that market have the same rights: rights of creators and rights of the user, and equal in all member states. The directives unfortunately do not require the same harmonisation for user rights as it provides to rights holders.

We need a better harmonised copyright for users in Europe, and we urge you to use CopyrightExceptions.eu to experience for yourself how diverse the landscape of exceptions is, and how far we still have to go.

The post CopyrightExceptions.eu: much needed insight into EU exceptions patchwork appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.