Digitalisation has led much of our interaction, communication and economic activity to take place through data or over online intermediaries. What kind of space should this digital sphere be? We believe that seeing this space as a market place only does not do it justice. This space is in effect our society – a society that is experiencing a digital transformation. Therefore we cannot accept the digital sphere as a place where only market dynamics rule. Society is more than an interaction between market players, and people are more than entrepreneurs or consumers.

As supporters of the European project, we believe that Europe needs to establish its own rules for the digital space, which embody our values: strong public institutions, democratic governance, sovereignty of communities and people, diversity of European cultures, equality and justice. A space that is common to all of us, but at the same time diverse and decentralised.

Over the past five months we have worked with a broad group stakeholders on developing a frame that can replace the existing Digital Single Market frame that dominates discussions about digital policy making in the EU. We propose a new, society-centric vision that is intended to guide policymakers and civil society organisations involved with digital policymaking in the direction of a more equitable and democratic digital environment, where basic liberties and rights are protected, where strong public institutions function in the public interest, and where people have a say in how their digital environment functions – a Shared Digital Europe.

The Shared Digital Europe must be based on four principles that aim to ensure that the balance between private and public interests is safeguarded. We believe that a Shared Digital Europe must enable self-determination, cultivate the commons, decentralise infrastructure and empower public institutions.

Combine these four elements with a truly European set of values and a new strategy presents itself. A strategy that policy makers and civil society actors can use to counter the current lack of democratic oversight in the digital space, the deteriorating online debate, the monopolisation of the digital sphere, the enclosure of knowledge and the means of knowledge production and the increasing violation of human rights in the digital space.

Most importantly our Vision for a Shared Digital Europe provides policy makers with an opportunity to work towards a truly European idea about how society should function in the digital age.

Are you working on digital policies and want to learn more or join our effort? Or do you want us to come by and share and discuss our vision with you? Don’t hesitate to reach out to hello@shared-digital.eu

The post A Vision for a Shared Digital Europe appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Position paper: Copyright Reform to Protect the Rights of Photographers and Painters

Public spaces in our cities and countrysides are a functional part of the commons, the places accessible to all members of society. These belong to the public and are not owned privately. The right to take and re-use pictures of our public spaces is critical for the arts, preservation of culture, and education. It is also highly relevant to freedom of expression. It forms the foundation upon which many European photographers, painters, and visual artists create art and earn a living.

The European Commission ran a consultation on this right, known commonly as “Freedom of Panorama”. The results of the consultation confirm that consumers, institutional users, service providers, professional photographers, and architects believe that making this right mandatory across the EU will have a positive impact on their activities.

In its communication published alongside the EU copyright reform proposal, the European Commission “confirms the relevance of this exception” and “strongly recommends that all Member States implement this exception.” Both Vice-President Ansip and Commissioner Oettinger have since publicly confirmed that there is a majority in the Council for such a mandatory right.

Despite broad support for the Freedom of Panorama right from various stakeholders, almost certain majorities in the Council and its own call to all Member States to introduce it, the European Commission decided not to include this issue in their Proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Instead, the Commission proposes that the exception remains unharmonised as per Copyright in the Information Society 2001 Directive.

The problems with the proposal

1. Fails to deliver an efficient and competitive Digital Single Market

The national copyright frameworks of Europe currently do not offer consistent rules on the Freedom of Panorama. The majority of countries have this right, but countries such as Greece, Italy, and Luxembourg are missing it entirely. Even while some countries have a copyright exception that allows people to share images of buildings and public art, the law in other countries restricts this exception to buildings only, or to non-commercial use, or based on the location of the photographer in relation to the artwork. This disharmony creates legal uncertainty for people who share their works across borders – i.e. anywhere on the internet, or with a work of art that will be shown or sold in another EU country. This situation also makes it difficult or even impossible to organise a European photography contest, or publish a book with photography. By not tackling this issue the European Commission perpetuates EU cross-border legal issues and thus fails to deliver on the primary goal of the reform.

2. Fails at providing a fair balance between private and public interests

Public spaces are a valuable public resource. Municipalities sometimes charge rent for visible parts of public spaces (advertising). In the case of works permanently installed in public spaces, a large proportion of the added value comes from the public space itself. The author is paid upfront for the installed artwork and receives additional income from using the public space as an advertising and exhibition space. Not allowing the re-use of images of public spaces would be akin to the privatisation of the commons.

Recommendations

COMMUNIA asks the European Parliament to introduce a broad, EU-wide Freedom of Panorama right that applies to both commercial and noncommercial uses of all works permanently located in public spaces.

The post EU copyright should protect photography in public spaces appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Creative Commons—which is a founding member of COMMUNIA— reported a major milestone this year: over 1.1 billion CC licensed photos, videos, audio tracks, educational materials, research articles, 3D models and more have now been contributed to the shared global commons. More people and institutions than ever before make use of CC’s tools to free up rights-protected content for everybody to re-use.

In addition, CC noted a huge increase in the number of works shared in the public domain using the CC0 Public Domain Dedication and out-of-copyright works marked with the Public Domain Mark. According to the data, the total number of public domain works using these tools in 2014 was about 17.5 million. That number jumped to nearly 35 million in 2015. This means that the size of the CC-marked public domain nearly doubled over the last year. This is in part due to the tools being more widely and adopted by platforms like Europeana and Flickr. Providing clear information about the public domain status of works is crucial so that subsequent creators know they can use those works without any restriction.

You can read the full report, check out the data behind the numbers, and even make a donation to Creative Commons to continue this important work.

The post Doubling the size of the useable public domain appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

The main reason for this law seems to be the desire of Spanish newspaper publishers to get a legally guaranteed income stream from news aggregation sites. What is happening in Spain is a modification of the (largely failed) attempt by German news publishers to make news aggregators (such as Google News) pay for using small parts of news articles that they link to.

Compared to the German attempt, the Spanish approach is more elaborate, and more dangerous. While the German legislators simply created an ancillary right for press publishers and left it up to the publishers whether and how to enforce, waive or license the right, the Spanish law (English translation of the relevant bits here) approaches it from the user side of the equation:

Here, the law creates a right for ‘electronic content aggregation providers’ to use ‘non-significant fragments of aggregated content which are disclosed in periodic publications or on websites which are regularly updated’ without the permission of the rights holder. However such uses require payment of a ‘fair remuneration’ to the rights holder (via a collecting society). This is a right that content providers already have and can choose to license or waive assuming the non-significant fragments are copyrightable and absent an applicable exception or limitation.  What this new legislation does is eliminate the ability of providers to choose how to exercise this right, and impose a mandatory royalty on reusers even for content that has been made available under a public license such as Creative Commons or that is otherwise available under an exception to copyright or in the public domain.

Collateral damage

While at first this may sound like a limitation of the exclusive rights of publishers, this construction works in the opposite direction. Because the new right is unwaivable, creators and publications who want to encourage others to reuse their content cannot waive the requirement that users must pay for aggregating their content. With this construction the proposed law aims to make sure that publishers cannot decide to not enforce their right when the publishers actually benefit from the activities provided through aggregation platforms (as has been done in Germany). Unfortunately the unwaivable nature of this new right has the potential to cause massive collateral damage among other internet users.

As the new right would apply to all ‘content disclosed in periodic publications or on websites which are regularly updated’ it would not only apply to traditional news publications but pretty much any website that is regularly updated (such as a blog). While traditional publishers may welcome this new right, it is fair to assume that there is a substantial number of creators and publishers who do not want to be remunerated for re-use of non-significant fragments taken from their websites either because their business models is based on traffic or because they want to share their writings as widely as possible.

Even worse the new law also threatens render ineffective the Creative Commons licenses that are used by many creators to explicitly allow others to reuse their creations for free in many situations. By making the right unwaivable aggregators are required to pay fair remuneration to a collective rights management organisations even if a creator has chosen to apply a Creative Commons license that allows the free reuse of her creation.

These negative effects of the new law do not limit themselves to the field of blogging and general web publishing. Over at Global Voices, Renata Avila makes the case that the revised law would also impact open access publishing activities by Spanish scholars and academic institutions:

The current reform of Spain’s copyright law incorporates a new levy on universities that is related to open access to publications. Under the policy, universities that want to share research or other content for free will be prohibited from doing so beyond the confines of their institution and personnel. In other words, if you are an author from a university and you want to share beyond the academic world and someone links to your journal article, that person must pay even if you do not even want the payment. A percentage of these fees will be collected by the Spanish agency CEDRO (Centro Español de Derechos Reprográficos) and the virtual campuses of universities will be required to comply.

Given the above it is clear that what may have started as another ill-conceived attempt to support the failing business models of traditional publishers by extending the scope of copyright is in fact a massive attack on the commons and business models that do not rely on limiting access to creative works. Not only does this have negative effects on the users of copyrighted works but it also frustrates authors’ right to choose how to share their works and under what terms.

As such the upcoming amendment of the spanish IPR law is another illustration of the dangers of looking at copyright law primarily as an enabler of a specific set of business models.

The post Did Spain just declare war on the commons? appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.