U.S Law Professor Lydia Loren has just published a draft paper that contains what may be one of the most sensible contributions to the ongoing discussion about the ‘orphan works problem’. In her paper ‘Abandoning the Orphans: An Open Access Approach to Hostage Works‘ she makes a strong argument that the very name that has […]

Information Sans Frontières (ISF), an alliance representing public cultural heritage institutions in Europe, has published a new position statement on the proposed Orphan Works directive. On 23 March the ISF reacted to the recent changes in the proposal that resulted from the ongoing negotiations between Council, Parliament and the Commission stating that it was “deeply […]

This post by Lucie Guibault was first published on the Kluwer Copyright Blog and is reproduced here with kind permission of the author. The Proposal for a Directive on certain permitted uses of orphan works, introduced in the European Parliament on 24 May 2011, has been following its merry way through the legislative meanders ever […]

In line with an issue raised in our policy paper on the proposed amendments to PSI Directive there is now a Spanish petition that asks the Europeana Commission to propose a single open data license to be used for Public Sector Information across all EU member states: Dear Neelie Kroes, We sincerely admire the courage […]

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 […]

Ten years after the EU Directive on Copyright in the Information Society: Looking back and Looking Forward. In may 2011 the directive 2001/29/EC of 22 may 2001 on copyright and related rights in the information society (also known as the ‘copyright’ or ‘infosoc’ directive) has turned 10. To mark this (belated) birthday, the CRIDS (University […]

There is a new (dated 4 November 2011) note by the Polish presidency on two issues that have turned out to be controversial among the EU Member States in the negotiations about the Commission’s proposed orphan works directive. Both issues addressed in the presidency note have been identified by COMMUNIA in it’s policy paper on […]

It is well known that sometimes you need to be an outsider to be able to analyze complex problems in a meaningful way. In the ongoing discussions about copyright in the digital environment Russian president Dmitry Medvedev might turn out to be the much-needed outsider. In the past Russia has not had a very strong […]

On the 28th of October the European Commission has adopted a recommendation on digitisation and digital preservation. This recommendation is following up on a similar recommendation from 2006. At the core of the recommendation is the request to the member states to step up their digitization efforts, pool their resources and involve private actors in […]

At the occasion of the 1st Digital Agenda Assembly and the corresponding launch of the COMMUNIA Association, the COMMUNIA Association has published a set of 14 postcards with 14 policy recommendations. The policy recommendations have been drawn up by the members of the COMMUNIA project and they serve as guidelines for the works of the […]