Posts tagged with: copyright reform

Yesterday the European Commission unveiled five more elements of its Digital Single Market Strategy. These consist of new e-commerce rules (including a legislative proposal to address unjustified geoblocking), updates to the EU audiovisual rules and ‘a targeted approach to online platforms‘. From the copyright perspective the geoblocking proposal and the communication on online platforms are […]

Last month the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from US authors who attempted to overturn a prior decision that Google’s scanning of millions in copyright books amounted to “fair use”. This refusal marks the end of a decade long legal fight about the Google books project. This means that in the US […]

The current European Commission public consultation is about ancillary copyright as well as the ‘panorama exception’ (nobody seems to understand why these two were combined in a single consultation process). Freedom of panorama refers to the legal right to take and share photos, video, and images of architecture, sculptures and other works which are located […]

Last week Politico published a leaked draft of the Commission’s forthcoming communication on Online Platforms in the Digital Single Market. As the the title suggests, this is another piece of the puzzle in the Commission’s attempt to create a European Digital Single Market. While it does not directly deal with copyright issues, the document discusses […]

The text was written by Katarzyna Strycharz.  Since the beginning of the year there’s been a lot of discussion (and confusion too) about whether the Diary of Anne Frank is now in public domain. Under the normal rules regarding the duration of copyright protection, the work should have entered into the public domain on 1 […]

Last week COMMUNIA submitted its response to the European Commission’s public consultation on the evaluation and modernisation of the legal framework for the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR). We believe that the existing Directive fails to adequately address the varying types (and by extension, impact) of activities that would technically constitute copyright infringement. This […]

It is relatively well documented that neither the French nor publishers are big fans of copyright reform. Given this, the comments from the CEO of the French publisher Hachette Livre on at last week’s London Book Fair are not entirely surprising.   Less than three weeks after the European Commission launched a consultation that appears […]

In the ongoing reform of copyright, the European Commission has presented a conservative approach . There are some alarming ideas being raised, such as ancillary copyright and broadening the scope of internet intermediaries’ liability. If these concepts are translated into policy, it would make copyright even more complicated to understand and the internet a less […]

While at this stage almost everyone agrees that the EU’s 2001 Copyright Framework is outdated and needs to be reformed, there is a very broad spectrum of ideas of what such a reform should look like. Recently, two of the three EU legislative bodies (who will need to agree on the final outcome) have laid […]

Creating a fully integrated Digital Single Market (DSM) is one of the main priorities of the current European Commission. The commission has outlined its general approach in last years Digital Single Market communication (which we have discussed here). In reaction to this communication the European Parliament has been working on a report. The report on […]