Blog

COMMUNIA is part of a group of civil society organizations from all around the globe that promotes access to, and use of, knowledge, the Access to Knowledge or A2K Coalition. COMMUNIA has been a co-initiator of the A2K Coalition. Today, the A2K Coalition is launching its website with demands for education, research and cultural heritage. […]

Last October, COMMUNIA was invited by the European Commission to a stakeholder dialogue to improve cross border access to audiovisual (AV) content. As part of the stakeholder dialogue, the European Commission organised a series of three meetings during which it invited stakeholders (predominantly organisations representing various parts of the audiovisual media sector) to agree on […]

‘Walled Culture: How Big Content Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Keep Creators Poor’ is a new book by long time tech journalist and copyright policy observer Glyn Moody. The book is available as a paperback and for download in various digital formats. It is part of the Walled Culture Project […]

The International Association on the Public Domain looks to expand its advocacy work and engage in strategic litigation in Europe. COMMUNIA has been awarded an eight-year grant of three million euros by Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. This opens a new chapter in the history of the organisation, which was […]

Libraries have long played a crucial role in ensuring broad public access to knowledge and culture. So as more and more of our lives take place online, it is important that libraries are able to play their traditional role there. This concept is at the heart of our Policy Recommendation #10: libraries should be enabled […]

It is four and a half months since the CJEU — in its judgment in case C-401/19 — set clear limits for the use of automated filters to comply with the provisions of Article 17 of the CDSM directive. The court ultimately concluded that Article 17 is lawful and rejected Poland’s request for annulment of […]

COMMUNIA and reCreating Europe will be co-hosting the joint expert workshop “Copyright Flexibilities: mapping, explaining, empowering”, taking place in a hybrid format at the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Information Law (IViR) and on Zoom on September 21st, 2022, from 09:00 to 17:00 CEST. At the workshop, three websites/databases tracking the status of users’ rights […]

COMMUNIA and Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte are pleased to announce the detailed programme of the Filtered Futures conference on September 19th in Berlin.

On September 19th, 2022, we are organising — together with Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte — the Filtered Futures conference on fundamental rights constraints of upload filters after the CJEU ruling on Article 17 of the copyright directive. The CJEU decision on Article 17 of the copyright directive has defined a framework for the use of automated […]

In just five years, the amount of e-waste has increased by 21 percent. Only a fraction is recycled. Europe is at the top of this sad statistic, according to the Global E-Waste Monitor 2020. One of the most common reasons for devices to end up in the trash is broken batteries. More and more often, […]