Posts tagged with: copyright

Traditionally, at the beginning of the new year we celebrated what is known as Public Domain Day: on the first of January of any given year the works of authors who have been dead for more than 70 years enter the public domain. As this is a decisive year for copyright reform in the European […]

COMMUNIA organised the first meeting of our new project ‘Copyright for Education’ at the beginning of December. We invited over a dozen stakeholders and experts from the education field, from organisations such as Wikimedia Deutschland and the Reading and Writing foundation. One of the essential questions of the meeting was how can we collaborate for […]

Last week a number of Europeana organisations representing libraries and other cultural heritage organizations released a joint response to the Commission’s copyright proposals. The paper, issued by LIBER, EBLIDA, IFLA, Public Libraries 2020 and Europeana, deals with those elements of the EU copyright framework that are directly relevant to cultural heritage institutions. This includes four […]

Today we are publishing the second in a series of position papers dealing with the various parts of the European Commission’s proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (see our first paper on the education exception here). Today’s paper deals with the Commission’s proposal to introduce a mandatory exception that would […]

Today we are publishing the first in a series of position papers dealing with the various parts of the European Commission’s proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Today’s paper deals with the Commission’s proposal to introduce a mandatory exception that would allow a limited number of beneficiaries to use works […]

Last week the CJEU handed down another judgement dealing with digital activities of libraries (see our take on the e-lending decision from 2 weeks ago here). In its judgement in the Doke & Soulier case (C 301/15) the court ruled that the French law on out-of-print books, which allows French publishers to publish digital editions […]

Yesterday the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered good news in a case that that eagerly watched by Librarians across the Europeana Union. In its judgement in the case VOB vs Stichting Leenrecht (C-174/15 – press release here) the court ruled that rental right and lending right directive also covers e-lending. This is […]

The debate whether the copyright reform in a proposed shape would be beneficial for Europe or not is now a key topic for digital rights organizations. But what do measures suggested by the European Commission actually mean? COMMUNIA and EDRi have jointly developed a Copyright reform guideline to the “legalese” of the draft directive. We […]

Can we make copyright serve users better? We asked several copyright policy experts from civil society organisations for their view on the current copyright reform: what are the biggest hopes, the biggest fears and their concrete plans to improve the current copyright regime to fit our digital society? Film maker Sebastiaan ter Burg created the video below […]

In its communication on the copyright framework, the European Commission has promised to clarify the scope of the existing exception for illustration of teaching, and its application for digital uses. The overarching goal was to have a mandatory exception that is relevant and effective in the digital age. Having read the leaked draft of the […]