It is generally accepted wisdom that if you do not want something to be noticed you can best announce it on a Friday afternoon. Presenting a study right before the start of the summer holidays is a variation of this. Seen in this light, it is a bit unfortunate that the Spanish Association of Publishers […]

Yesterday the European Parliament approved MEP Felix Reda’s evaluation report of the copyright directive. With the report the European Parliament gives a clear signal that the European Copyright rules need to be modernised. This puts the ball in the court of the Commission, which needs to come up with concrete legislative proposals for a copyright […]

Tomorrow the European Parliament will vote on the Reda report on the implementation of the 2001 copyright directive, which has been approved by the legal affairs committee on the 16th of June. One of the most contentious issues during the vote in the legal affairs committee was an amendment by proposed by the German EPP MEP […]

Back in April we published our list of the 10 worst and the 5 best amendments to Felix Reda’s draft report on the implementation of the InfoSoc Directive. Tomorrow the Legal Affairs committee (JURI) of the European Parliament will vote on these amendments to the draft report. In light of the upcoming vote and given […]

Today the European Commission presented an ambitious package of reform proposals known as the Digital Single Market (DSM) Strategy for Europe. Among other topics like ‘Affordable high quality parcel delivery’ and ‘Building the data economy’ the DSM strategy represents the first concrete announcement of upcoming changes to the European Union’s outdated 2001 Copyright Framework. As […]

In January MEP Felix Reda presented a draft report on the implementation of Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (a.k.a the Copyright Directive). This draft report has proven to be hugely controversial […]

Today Copyright 4 Creativity (C4C), a coalition of 35 organisations from the NGO, library and technology sectors (including a number of COMMUNIA members) is launching a copyright manifesto. The copyright manifesto is intended as a contribution to the ongoing review of the European Union’s copyright rules. With the manifesto, Copyright 4 Creativity wants to stress […]

As part of the public consultation on a review of the EU copyright rules the EU commission included two questions related to a single EU copyright title. These questions refer to the fact that in the current situation all member states of the EU have their own copyright laws. These laws need to meet the […]

For those of us looking forward to copyright rules that enable European cultural heritage institutions to provide online access to their collections, two important things happened last week: on Wednesday 29th October, the Orphan Works directive (OW directive) came into force and on Saturday 1st November, the new European Commission headed by Jean-Claude Juncker assumed office. The first event […]

In 2013 the European Union enacted Directive 2013/37/EU amending Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information (PSI). The 2013 directive is an important pillar of the European Union’s open data strategy. It establishes the general principle that public sector bodies’ available information shall be reusable in accordance with a number of conditions, such […]