Background

According to Article 14 of the CDSM Directive, any material resulting from an act of reproduction of a public domain work cannot be subject to copyright or related rights-protection unless it is original in the sense that it is the author’s own intellectual creation. All EU member states are required to implement Article 14 and amend their national legislation accordingly (see Deborah De Angelis’s blog post).

Italy transposed Article 14 of the CDSM Directive into domestic law by passing Article 32-quarter of the Italian Copyright Law n. 633/1941 in November 2023 (Legislative Decree no. 177). The article includes a problematic addition: “The provisions on the reproduction of cultural heritage contained in Legislative Decree No. 42 of 22 January 2004 [CCHL] remain unaffected.” The reference is to Article 108 of the CCHL, which requires the payment of a concession fee for the reproduction of digital images of state-owned cultural heritage in the public domain if the reproduction is for-profit. The provisions of the CCHL beg the question of the protection of the public domain by other fields of law outside of copyright and related rights, which are not explicitly mentioned in Article 14 of the CDSM Directive (see Mirco Modolo’s article on the subject). Only the European Court of Justice (ECJ) can provide guidance on this matter. However, no Italian court has referred to the ECJ yet to clarify the relationship between Article 14 and the CCHL.

In recent years, the CCHL has been used by Italian cultural heritage institutions to initiate a number of lawsuits against commercial uses of works by Italian artists, which are clearly in the Public Domain.

Recent case law on the unauthorised reproduction of Italian cultural heritage in the public domain

1) Ministry of Culture v. Studi d’Arte Cave di Michelangelo:

In 2018, a famous Italian luxury fashion brand posted a video on the internet in which a physical copy (a clone of the statue) of the David—created by Studi d’Arte Cave Michelangelo S.r.l. (Cave)—could be seen wearing a tailor-made high-quality outfit of the brand. The Ministry of Culture sought to have the Court of first instance of Florence issue an interim measure to prevent further use of the image of Michelangelo’s David for commercial purposes. The Court dismissed the petition on the grounds of lack of urgency, as both defendants had removed the contested material from their websites.

However, the Ministry of Culture found out that Cave continued using the image of the David on another website, studidarte.it, still for commercial purposes, and filed a new urgent petition against Cave in 2021. The petition was dismissed and then appealed against it. On 11 April 2022, the Court ordered (see Simone Aliprandi and Carlo Piana’s comment) Cave to stop using the images of the David for commercial purposes, to remove all images of the statue from Cave’s websites, to pay the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Firenze a fine of € 500 for each day of delay in the execution of the preventive order, and it was further ruled that summaries of the order would be published at the expense of the defendants in two national daily newspapers, in two local daily newspapers and on Cave’s Instagram profile and YouTube channel.

The Court concluded that the mere ex-post payment of compensation is insufficient for the legitimate reproduction of a cultural asset. For the use of the image to be lawful, consent is required, following a discretionary assessment of the requested use (and its possible configuration) concerning the asset’s cultural purpose and historical-artistic character. The nature of a cultural asset inherently requires the protection of its image through an evaluation of compatibility reserved for the Public Administration. This evaluation encompasses the right to reproduce the asset and the safeguarding of the asset’s consideration by fellow citizens – its identity as a collective memory of the national community and the territory. Therefore, according to the Court of Florence, this notion should constitute a comprehensive right to the cultural asset’s image (right of publicity).

2) Galleria dell’Accademia Firenze v. GQ:

In 2020, the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Firenze and the Ministry of Culture sued the publishing house GQ (Condé Nast) for the unauthorised use of the image of Michelangelo’s David on the July/August issue’s cover of GQ Italia (see Justus Dreyling’s post on this blog and this interview with Deborah De Angelis). The plaintiff asked the Court to enjoin the use of the image of Michelangelo’s David. The Court promptly issued an order banning the use of the image on the cover of the magazine and prohibited any further digital use of the image.

Eventually, on 15 May 2023, the same Court ruled again in favour of the Gallerie and the Ministry of Culture and condemned the publisher GQ to pay the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze two separate amounts: € 20,000 as a concession fee and an additional € 30,000 for the way in which David’s image was distorted for the magazine. In addition, the judge acknowledged the right to the image (which is granted by Article 10 of the Italian Civil Code to physical persons and legal entities), with specific reference to cultural heritage, considering the legal basis for this right is found in Articles 107 and 108 of Legislative Decree No. 42/2004, which directly implement Article 9 of the Constitution(See Eleonora Rosati’s comment on IPKat).

3) Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia v. Ravensburger:

On  24 October 2022 (see Deborah De Angelis and Brigitte Vézina’s comment on this blog and Giuilia Dore’s contribution on the Kluwer Copyright blog), the Court of first instance of Venice decided on the lawsuit brought by the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, a public museum under the Italian Ministry of Culture, against the German toy-making companies Ravensburger AG and Ravensburger Verlag GmbH as well as their Italian branch represented by Ravensburger S.r.l. for the unauthorised use of the images of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man on a series of puzzles. The order enjoined the German company to stop using the image of the Vitruvian Man for commercial purposes, to pay to the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia a fine of € 1,500 for each day of delay in the execution of the preventive order, and it was further decided that summaries of the order would be published at the expense of the defendants in two national daily newspapers and in two local daily newspapers.

4) Uffizi v. Gaultier:

In October 2022, the Uffizi Galleries announced their intention to sue the French fashion house Jean Paul Gaultier for damages that could exceed € 100,000 after the company’s (allegedly) unauthorised use of images of Botticelli’s Renaissance masterpiece The Birth of Venus to adorn a range of clothing products, including T-shirts, leggings, and tops, for the brand’s new line Le Musée. There has not been any news on this controversy, and there is no evidence that a lawsuit has been served (see, Justus Dreyling, Brigitte Vézina, and Teresa Nobre’s post on this blog).

It is clear that a protectionist trend is emerging in line with the approach of the government (for a critical approach, see Roberto Caso’s comment on the Kluwer Copyright blog).

The Ministerial Decree on the minimum tariff for the reproduction of the digital images of the state cultural heritage

Prior to 11 April 2023, the interpretation and practice of art. 108 of CCHL granted cultural heritage institutions discretion to decide whether to adopt an Open Access policy, enabling the use of the digital images of cultural heritage through the use of a Creative Commons licence or Public Domain tools, to promote fair access to and sharing of Italian culture, while supporting the role of cultural heritage institutions in sustainable economic and social development.

In April 2023, however, the Italian Ministry of Culture  introduced minimum fees for commercial reproductions of state-owned cultural heritage, including for works in the Public Domain that all state-owned public museums will have to apply (Decree no. 161 also known as Guidelines). The Decree will have a detrimental effect on the promotion and dissemination of Italian cultural heritage globally, impeding knowledge sharing (see reporting on huffingtonpost.it and repubblica.it). The new guidelines represent a significant setback as they contradict the fundamental principles of public enjoyment and enhancement of cultural heritage enshrined in the Italian Cultural Heritage Code.

The situation in Italy escalated on 14 June 2023, when Senator Marcheschi (Fratelli d’Italia) proposed to punish with a fine between € 20,000 to 60,000 the unlicensed use of cultural objects in the public domain in violation of Articles 107(1) and 108(1)-(3) of the CCHL (as an amendment to the proposal of law on Article 518-duodecies of the Italian Criminal Code, on the destruction, dispersal, deterioration, defacement and illegal use of the physical cultural heritage and landscape). At the session of June 21st, 2023, the amendment was withdrawn, having received a negative opinion because of the costs it would entail to activate the sanctions, but it turned into an agenda for the Government “to consider the advisability of providing for the imposition of an administrative fine of 20,000 to 60,000 euros against anyone who, in violation of Articles 107, paragraph 1, and 108 paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 of Legislative Decree No. 42 of January 22, 2004, reproduces a cultural heritage or markets its reproduction in the absence of or in contravention of the order of the authority in charge of the property.”

A solution for no problem

The flow of income generated from the licensing of images of cultural objects remains more or less unchanged for major museums. Peripheral and smaller museums, by contrast, lament an increase in bureaucracy not supported by the hiring of new staff. The reproduction and dissemination of images of cultural heritage in smaller museums, even for commercial purposes, contributed to the diffusion of culture and the promotion of national heritage.

The discretion that was left to individual museums when licensing images of the objects under their custody, allowed the museum staff to consider different factors: internal costs, whether they already had good quality images not covered by copyright, the promotion of the museum, the valorization of the cultural object, etc. The mandatory application of the minimum tariff stated by the guidelines makes it impossible, e.g. for state-owned museum staff, to permit the free use of images according to the open access principle. In the past, museums and other state-owned cultural institutions could allow the free use also for commercial purposes (as permitted by CC licences and tools compatible with open access) without asking for a concession fee. The discretion previously held by cultural institutions to decide whether to authorise the free use of cultural heritage images has been eliminated.

Instead of creating positions to help under-staffed museums or promoting the preservation of the Italian cultural heritage, the Ministry of Culture has enacted unnecessary restrictions. The imposition of high fixed fees for the for-profit use of images of cultural objects in the Public Domain may result in limiting the exploitation only to privileged classes of individuals, while preventing local communities or “communities of origin” with a limited budget from participating in it. Moreover, the community has not been involved in the decision-making process and has not had a chance to participate in the debate. This scenario is further complicated by the possibility for the licensing administration to deny for-profit uses of images by invoking the “decorum” exception, namely judging the declared use of the image of the artwork as inappropriate. “Decorum” is a very broad, subjective, and undefined concept that contributes to generating uncertainty in this field (see Daniele Mancorda’s contribution).

What is more, creativity is at risk! Today, when using professional photographic reproductions of works in the Public Domain, which are subject to both copyright and the Guidelines, users will face the so-called “tragedy of anticommons” (a term coined by Michael Heller). These works will be used less due to the existence of multiple layers of protection, which are hard to navigate.

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Il nuovo rinascimento [“the new Renaissance”]

We have covered the lawsuits against French fashion label Jean Paul Gaultier for using Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus on a collection and German toy maker Ravensburger for using Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man on a jigsaw puzzle on the COMMUNIA blog in the past months. Both Gaultier and Ravensburger were brought to court by the respective museums that host these works in their collections, the Uffizi in Florence and the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, respectively, for violations of the Italian Cultural Heritage Code. According to Art. 106 ff. of the Code, commercial uses of works require the authorization of the cultural heritage institution that has the work in question in its collection as well as the payment of a concession fee – even if that work is in the Public Domain.

More recently, the court of Florence has ruled in favour of the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Florence and the Italian Ministry of Culture for the use of the image of Michelangelo’s David on the cover of GQ Magazine Italy. The cover features a hologram, which, depending on the viewing angle, shows a photographic reproduction of Michelangelo’s statue or a bare-chested, muscular man posing in a similar fashion (see this interview with COMMUNIA member Deborah De Angelis as well as Eleonora Rosati’s post for the IPKat).

Copyright with a glued-on beard

All of the conclusions reached in these cases can be rebutted on the same grounds we’ve explained extensively in previous contributions. The reproduced works are clearly in the Public Domain, that is, they are completely free from any copyright restriction. Their creators Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Michelangelo (1475-1564) have all been dead for centuries. Even Michelangelo, the youngest of the bunch, lived long before any concrete notion of copyright ever existed. Yes, the Italian Cultural Heritage Code is an instrument of administrative law. The function of this Section of the Code is so similar to copyright, however, that one must wonder if its raison d’être isn’t simply to serve as a pseudo-copyright that the Italian state can use to generate income off of Public Domain works. When new laws are created to negate the effect of a carefully yet imperfectly-balanced copyright system to justify a dubious revenue model, we must react.

Because in doing so, the Code calls into question the social contract on which copyright is based. Copyright is granted for a limited period of time, allowing creators to extract monetary gain from their works for as long as they are copyright-protected. When a work’s term of protection ends, it enters the Public Domain and, as a rule, becomes free to use by everybody. Carving out Italian collections from this rule hinders access to our common European cultural heritage. The works in these collections belong to all of us in the sense that everyone should have access to them and be able to draw on them to create something new.

But this isn’t just a philosophical issue. It is also fundamentally at odds with copyright law and its intrinsic balance: that protection lasts for a limited time. As Roberto Caso comments on the Kluwer Copyright Blog: “The ex post facto judicial creation of an eternal and indefinite pseudo-intellectual property leads to the violation of the principle of the numerus clausus of intellectual property rights.” More specifically, the Code is incompatible with the spirit of Article 14 of the DSM Directive, which states that reproductions of works of visual art that are in the public domain cannot be subject to copyright or related rights, unless the reproduction itself is an original creative work (see Giulia Dore’s contribution to Kluwer).

Is there a method in the madness?

What is equally egregious is the fact that the Italian cultural heritage code establishes the Italian state as an arbiter to determine whether any given use of a work is appropriate. The idea that a state – more than 500 years after the creation of a work – claims to be able to determine what is an appropriate use of a work is not only frivolous, but dangerous for democracy, freedom of expression and participation in cultural life. There is no need for a state to determine if something is an appropriate or inappropriate use. Leave that decision to creators, their audiences, and to society as a whole, whose members can engage in free and democratic debates.

As a side note: It is even more frivolous if we consider that the Italian Ministry of Tourism runs a campaign full of clichés with a cartoonish Venus as a modern-day influencer — ironically the campaign is called “Open to Meraviglia” [English text in original, which translates into “Open to Marvel”] . To be clear, the Ministry of Tourism is well within their rights to do this, and this is a perfectly fine example of what parody might look like. So why should a public body be allowed but not a toy maker, magazine or fashion creator? These events set a very worrying precedent for artists and creators in Italy, Europe, and all over the world.

While it’s been fun writing about the absurdity of these lawsuits for some time, enough is enough. Italy must repeal this section of its cultural heritage code and ensure that Public Domain works can be freely reused by all.

The post Something (the Public Domain) is rotting in the state of Italy appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

The defendants are the world-renowned German toy making companies Ravensburger AG, Ravensburger Verlag GMBH and their Italian office represented by Ravensburger S.r.l.. They were brought to court for using the image of the widely popular ​​Public Domain drawing to produce and sell puzzles without authorization or payment of a fee to the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, where the physical artwork is kept.

A puzzling question

Let’s pause here. Authorization, fee, Public Domain work… These don’t add up. The Public Domain is made up of works that are out of copyright, free to use by anyone for any purpose. The Public Domain is the treasure trove of creative works that inspires us all and upon which all creativity depends. In fact, protecting the Public Domain is so important that in 2019 the European legislator made it explicit in Article 14 of the European Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) that non-original reproductions of works in the Public Domain must stay in the Public Domain — no copyright protection arises from the simple act of reproduction of public domain works, e.g. through digitisation.

So, how come the Gallerie could prevent Ravensburger from using an image of the Public Domain Vitruvian Man on its puzzles? How come the court:

• prohibited the defendants from using for commercial purposes the image of the work “Vitruvian Man” by Leonardo da Vinci and its name, in any form and any product and/or instrument, including digital ones, on their websites and on all other websites and social networks under their control;
• ordered the defendants to pay a penalty of € 1.500 to the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia for each day of delay in the execution of the precautionary order;
• ordered the publication of the order in extracts and/or summaries of its contents by the Gallerie dell’Accademia and at the expense of the defendants in two national daily newspapers and in two local daily newspapers?

The answer: The Italian Cultural Heritage Code

The answer lies with a particular piece of Italian law: the Italian Cultural Heritage Code (Legislative Decree n. 42/2014). According to the Italian Cultural Heritage Code and relevant case law, faithful digital reproductions of works of cultural heritage — including works in the Public Domain — can only be used for commercial purposes against authorization and payment of a fee. Importantly though, the decision to require authorization and claim payment is left to the discretion of each cultural institution (see articles 107 and 108). In practice, this means that cultural institutions have the option to allow users to reproduce and reuse faithful digital reproductions of Public Domain works for free, including for commercial uses. This flexibility is fundamental for institutions to support open access to cultural heritage.

Incompatible with Article 14 CDSM

Be that as it may, the Cultural Heritage Code’s “authorization+fee” system generally deals a severe blow to the Public Domain in Italy, and alarmingly, beyond its national borders — Creative Commons calls attention to this in its Global Open Culture Call to Action to Policymakers. It is in fact completely at odds with EU legislation protecting the Public Domain: Article 32, quater of the Italian Copyright law (Law n. 633 of April 22nd, 1941) clearly conflicts with the intent of the European legislator. That is because Article 32, quater transposes Article 14 CDSM but limits its effect to the application of the Italian Cultural Heritage Code. We at Communia have strong reasons to believe this is incompatible with the letter and the spirit of Article 14.

Even in cases where European legislation does not in itself have direct effects or applicability in the national legal system of the Member States, it must always represent an indispensable guiding parameter for national courts, which are called upon to interpret national law in the light of European legislation (i.e., the obligation to interpret it in conformity). Further, there is a general prohibition for Member States to allow a national rule to prevail over a contrary EU rule, without making a distinction between earlier and later national law.

Not the only case

The Vitruvian Man is sadly not an isolated case. Just a few months ago, we commented on the one opposing the Uffizi Museum to Jean Paul Gaultier, where the defendant, a French fashion designer, used images of another Renaissance masterpiece, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. These cases are bound to leave wreckage in their wake: great uncertainty around the use of cultural heritage across the entire single market, hampered creativity, stifled European entrepreneurship, reduced economic opportunities, and a diminished, impoverished Public Domain. To address these issues, we hope the European Court of Justice will soon have the opportunity to clarify that the Public Domain must not be restricted, a fortiori by rules outside of copyright and related rights, which compromise the European legislator’s clear intent to uphold the Public Domain.

Quite curiously, even though the precautionary order should be executed with specific regard to the Vetruvian Man’s puzzle, it is interesting to see that on the defendant’s website one can still  buy puzzles reproducing “La Gioconda” (the Mona Lisa) and “The Last Supper” by Leondardo da Vinci; “The Kiss” by Hayez and another “The Kiss” by Klimt and many other monuments, works of art, as well as images of nature and animals.

Liberalise it

Is legal action the right way to deal with this issue? Court proceedings are expensive and will not change reality. A different approach (compatible with an open access policy and the protection of the Public Domain) that liberalises the faithful reproduction of cultural heritage in the Public Domain would be more supportive of tourism, the creative industry and “the benefit of civil society in general. Other than being compatible with the principle stated by Art. 14 of the CDSM Directive.

The post The Vitruvian Man: A Puzzling Case for the Public Domain appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

This blog post analyses the implementation of the copyright exceptions for Text and Data Mining, which is defined in the Italian law as any automated technique designed to analyse large amounts of text, sound, images, data or metadata in digital format to generate information, including patterns, trends, and correlations (Art. 70 ter (2) LdA). As we will see in more detail below, the Italian lawmaker decided to introduce some novelties when implementing Art. 3, while following more closely the text of the Directive when implementing Art. 4.

Text and data mining for scientific purposes

Art. 70 ter (1) LdA permits reproductions made by research organisations and cultural heritage institutions for scientific research purposes, for purposes of extraction of text and data from works or other materials available on networks or databases to which they lawfully have access to, as well as communication to the public of the results of research when expressed in new original works. It seems that the Italian lawmaker committed a lexical fallacy by adding that the purpose of the reproduction is to extract text and data from works and other materials available in networks or databases. This, as well as limiting the type of protected materials to those present on networks or databases, appear to be legislative inventions incompatible with the directive.

Notably, the new Italian exception also allows the communication to the public of the research outcome when such outcomes are expressed through new original works. In other words, the communication of protected materials resulting from computational research processes is permitted, provided that such results are included in an original publication, data collection or other original work.

The right of communication to the public was not contemplated in the original government draft; it was introduced in the last version of the article to accommodate the comments of the Joint Committees of the Senate and the Joint Committees of the Chamber, both highlighting the need to specify that the right of communication to the public concerns only the results of research, where expressed in new original works.

The beneficiaries of the TDM exception for scientific purposes are research organisations and cultural heritage institutions. Research organisations essentially reflect the definition offered by the directive. These are universities, including their libraries, research institutes or any other entity whose primary objective is to conduct scientific research activities or to conduct educational activities that include scientific research, which alternatively:

• operate on a non-profit basis or whose bylaws provide for the reinvestment of profits in scientific research activities, including in the form of public-private partnerships;
• or pursue a public interest purpose recognised by a European Union member state (Art. 70 ter, (4)LdA).

If commercial enterprises exercise a decisive influence, such as allowing access on a preferential basis to the results generated by scientific research activities (Art. 70 ter, (5) LdA), an organisation will not be considered a research organisation under this law. Cultural heritage institutions are defined broadly, including libraries, museums, and archives, as long as they are open to the public or accessible to the public, also those belonging to educational institutions, research organisations and public broadcasting bodies, as well as the institutes for the protection of film and sound heritage and the public broadcasting bodies (Art. 70 ter, (3)LdA).

The copies of works or other subject matter created need to be stored with an adequate level of protection and can be kept and used only for scientific research purposes, including the verification of research results (Art. 70 ter, (6)). Rightsholders are authorised to apply measures to ensure the safety and integrity of the networks and databases where the works or other subject materials are hosted (Art. 70 ter, (7) LdA). Such measures shall not go beyond what is necessary to achieve and can also be defined based on agreements between right holder’s associations, cultural heritage institutes and research organisations (Art. 70 ter (8) LdA). Such negotiations have not taken place so far.

The Italian lawmaker did not expressly contemplate any specific and fast procedure for cases where technical protection measures prevent a beneficiary from carrying out the permitted acts under both TDM exceptions. However, the law now recognises to the beneficiaries the right to extract a copy of the material protected by technological  measures in certain cases. Under Art. 70-sexies, LdA, beneficiaries of the TDM exception for scientific purposes (as well as the beneficiaries of the exception for digital and cross-border teaching activities exception) shall have the right to extract a copy of the protected material, when technological measures are applied based on agreements or on administrative procedures or judicial decisions. In order to benefit from this right, the person shall have lawful possession of copies of the protected material (or have had legal access to them), shall respect the conditions and the purposes provided for in the exception, and such extraction shall not conflict with the normal exploitation of the work or the other materials or cause an unjustified prejudice to the rights holders.

While the Italian lawmaker should be praised for introducing such a right, the Italian implementation still missed an opportunity to update the controversial and rarely applied negotiation and mediation procedures set forth in Art. 71 quinquies, (2) LdA (which transposed Art. 6(4) of the Infosoc Directive) to the actual needs of all beneficiaries of copyright exceptions. Furthermore, it should be noted that the law continues to reserve the application of the three-step test only to  the exceptions and limitations related to the use of protected materials available through on-demand services only, including under the new copyright exceptions, contrary to what is mandated by Art. 7(2) of the CDSM Directive.

Regarding contractual override protection, as stated by Art. 7(1) of the CDMS Directive, conflicting agreements with the TDM exception for scientific purposes are void.

Text and data mining for other purposes

The implementation of the exception for text and data mining for purposes beyond scientific research by any individual or organisation follows for the most part the text of Art. 4 of the CDSM Directive. Reproductions and extractions are allowed from works or other subject-matters available online or databases to which users have lawful access for TDM. The exception is subject to the possibility of rightsholders reserving their rights, but there is no clarification on how this reservation should be made. In this regard, the Italian law doesn’t mention the need​​ to express such reserves appropriately, such as through machine-readable standards when contents are made publicly available online.

No additional conditions or precisions are established on the retention and storing of copies of materials made to conduct text and data mining, nor on the measures that rights holders may take to ensure the safety and integrity of the networks and databases where the materials mined are hosted. Reproductions and extractions may be retained only for the time necessary for text and data mining as stated in  Art. 4 of the CDSM Directive.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Italian legislator should be praised for going beyond what is required by art. 3 of the CDSM Directive. The Italian implementation allows the application of the TDM exception for scientific purposes to the reproduction for the extraction of texts and data or other subject matters (to which the beneficiaries have lawful access) and to the communication to the public of the research outcome when it is expressed through new original work. Therefore, in this respect, the Italian legislator exercised the option allowed by Art. 25 of the CDSM Directive to adopt a broader provision, compatible with the exceptions and limitations provided for in the InfoSoc and Database Directives.

For TDM for other purposes, the lawmaker reproduced the text of Art. 4 of the directive, not adding any extra elements to regulate, as written before, the exercise of the faculty to opt out by rights holders in a suitable and machine-readable by the computers. The Italian implementation also missed an opportunity to introduce provisions to allow the reproduction of material protected by technical measures that prevent beneficiaries from carrying out the permitted acts under the both TDM  exceptions. In sum, a total organic revision of the Italian copyright law would be desirable, which would allow for a better understanding and knowledge by not only the interpreter of the law, but also by rightsholders and users.

The post The Italian Implementation of the New EU Text and Data Mining Exceptions appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

The answer lies not in copyright law but in the Italian cultural heritage code, Article 108 of Legislative Decree no. 42 of 2004 to be precise. This article of administrative law imposes a concession fee for the commercial reproduction of publicly owned works to be paid in advance to the institution delivering the work. Notably, the approach is also different from the concept of the Paying Public Domain or domaine public payant that exists in a number of African and Latin American countries and which taxes all uses of Public Domain works. Under the Italian cultural heritage code, fees need only to be paid for works that are held by Italian cultural heritage institutions and directly to that institution, not to the Italian state.

Cultural heritage laws should promote the public interest

We are aware of similar laws existing in Greece (Article 46 of Law no. 3028/2002 on the Protection of Antiques and Cultural Heritage in General), France (Article L621-42 of Code du Patrimoine) and Portugal (Administrative Order no. 10946/2014 on the Use of Images of Museums, Monuments and other Properties allocated to the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage). Importantly, administrative law in general and this type of cultural heritage code in particular operate on a different logic than intellectual property law, as Simone Ariprandi explains in greater detail. Administrative law as an area of public law governs relations between legal persons and the state and not relations between private individuals. The intention is thus to promote the public interest and not to protect the private interests of authors.

The problem is that this law does quite the opposite of promoting the public interest by de facto curtailing the Public Domain. The Public Domain is an essential component not just of our copyright system, but essential to our social and economic welfare, as expressed in our Public Domain Manifesto:

[The Public Domain] is the basis of our self-understanding as expressed by our shared knowledge and culture. It is the raw material from which new knowledge is derived and new cultural works are created. The Public Domain acts as a protective mechanism that ensures that this raw material is available at its cost of reproduction — close to zero — and that all members of society can build upon it.

Imposing a fee for the use of certain Public Domain works restricts access to these public goods and thus stifles creativity. COMMUNIA is built on the conviction that the Public Domain must be upheld and guarded against attempts to enclose it from both public and private actors if we want to ensure the widest possible access to culture and knowledge and creativity to thrive.

Users should be trusted

So why do some EU countries exploit the physical ownership of works for which copyright has long expired? There are two main reasons, which from the perspective of national lawmakers might justify this measure. The first one is financial. The second one could be a paternalistic argument to retain some control over the artifacts held by national cultural heritage institutions and shield them against alleged misuse.

The financial argument does not stand up to a simple cost-benefit analysis. Fees collected through this mechanism do more harm than good, and any revenue generated is far outweighed by the heavy cost for members of society who are deprived of their fundamental right to access and enjoy culture, knowledge and information.

The notion that artists like Botticelli et al. and their work require protection from the general public is also easily dispelled. While we understand that masterpieces like the Birth of Venus are closely associated with the Uffizi and representative of Italian culture in general, this does not justify a financial barrier to the reuse of Public Domain works. There is also little evidence for the inappropriate use of Public Domain works, as stated in CC’s “What Are the Barriers to Open Culture?” report. Thus, we do not see a basis for retaining control by pricing out unwanted uses to ensure that no harm is caused to the reputation of the work, the author or the institution itself. We believe to the contrary that in an open society, the public must be trusted and enabled to make uses that are in line with fundamental freedoms, including freedom of expression.

It is unlikely that the Uffizi are worried that the commercial exploitation of the Birth of Venus per se would create a reputational risk, since this contradicts the institution’s own practice of exploiting its works of art for commercial gain. It is of course a question of personal taste whether one likes Gaultier’s printed multicolor tulle lounge pants or not. Yet a quick look at the Uffizi webshop reveals that the institution is by no means shy to market Botticelli’s masterpiece in similar ways. The visitor will find a shopping bag, a spectacle case (including a spectacle cloth), an oven glove and similar artifacts all incorporating Boticelli’s painting in some way or another. To be clear, the Uffizi should use works from their collection as they see fit to generate income. But to claim that museum professionals know better how to place the Birth on an oven glove is dubious at best.

Botticelli created the Birth of Venus during the 1480s — more than 500 years ago — and yet it remains so iconic not in spite of Jean Paul Gaultier, the Simpsons and other commercial creators referencing or incorporating the work but because of them. The transformative use of the Birth — even in a commercial context — doesn’t diminish the work, but keeps it relevant and ensures that it lives on as part of our cultural memory.

In sum, Italy’s cultural heritage code, although promoting important principles such as preservation and protection of heritage, poses a threat to the public domain, to the detriment of creators, reusers and society as a whole. While the best way forward is to remove this provision from the Italian cultural heritage code, there is in the meantime room for agency for cultural heritage institutions. Cultural heritage institutions can better fulfill their mission and still operate within the scope of the law by choosing not to request the payment of a fee by reusers of public domain heritage. The Uffizi should lead by example and withdraw its claim, and celebrate how cultural heritage is continuously being reinvented in new and unexpected ways through free creative expression.

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In addition there are two Member States who have adopted so-called delegation laws that allow them to implement the provisions of the directive via subsequent administrative decrees. France adopted its delegation law in December 2019 and on the 20th of April Italy followed suit and adopted its delegation law. While the French implementation decree (which will include the actual provisions to be included in the copyright act) is still nowhere to be seen, the Italian Comitato Consultivo Permanente per il Diritto D’Autore is discussing a draft version of the Italian Implementation decree (pdf in Italian) today. 

Based on what is contained in the draft the Italian implementation is shaping up to be the worst one yet. The draft fails to implement exceptions that are mandatory under the directive (the fallback exception for out of commerce works in Article 8(2) CDSM), it claims that users can rely on a non-existing parody exception and it also claims (in the text of the law itself) that automated content recognition systems (a.k.a upload filters) can “ascertain clear violations” of copyright (something that literally everyone including the French government agrees that they can’t).

Otherwise, there has been relatively little recent movement in the EU Member States. The German implementation draft is still making its way through parliament. It is now in the final stages of deliberation and the the final vote is expected to take place on the 20th of May. Meanwhile most other Member States seem to be stuck in a holding pattern after having completed public consultations of their draft implementation legislation, shying away from introducing legislation into their parliaments.

Commission failure to provide guidance creates massive legal uncertainty.

This reluctance to move forward is clearly the result of the European Commission’s abject failure to deliver its long overdue Article 17 implementation guidance, which is intended to help Member States to resolve the internal contradictions contained in Article 17 and to implement it in a fundamental rights compliant way. 

The guidance which had originally been expected to be published in the second half of 2020 is being held up at the political level of the Commission since early this year.

The failure to deliver the guidelines puts those Member States who had counted on the Commission’s guidance into a difficult position. By waiting for the guidance to be published they have effectively lost the ability to implement the Directive in time.

Without the guidance from the Commission (or from the CJEU, which has recently postponed the AG opinion in the Polish case challenging the fundamental rights compliance of Article 17) Member States will need to figure out themselves how they intend to reconcile the requirement on platforms to ensure that legitimate uses of copyrighted works are not blocked with the parallel requirement to make best efforts to prevent the availability of works that rightholders want to have blocked.

Unfortunately, none of the already existing implementation laws provide any guidance either. Both the Dutch and the Hungarian laws have stuck to copying the language contained in the Directive including all of its internal contradictions. As a result they are passing the responsibility of reconciling the contradictions that they were not willing to address themselves on to the online platforms. Platform operators will now have to find a balance between the diverging interests of rightholders and users of their platforms. Given that they face a one-sided liability risk, there are huge incentives for them to err on the side of caution and structurally block legitimate uploads.

With the Commission’s guidance still missing in action, Member States still working on their implementations should instead orient themselves on the principles expressed in the Commission’s draft guidance and the arguments brought forward by the three EU legislators in last November’s CJEU hearing of the Polish challenge to Article 17. At both occasions the Commission made it clear that implementations of Article 17 must limit the use of automated blocking of uploads to situations where such uploads are “manifestly infringing”. Such safeguards must operate ex-ante, meaning that implementations that only include an ex-post complaint and redress mechanism (as it is the case in the Dutch and Hungarian implementations) do not meet the requirements established by the directive. 

At the moment only the implementation proposals from Germany, Austria and Finland fulfil these conditions to some extent. Of these, the German proposal is the only one that still has a chance to become enacted before next month’s implementation deadline. 

While it is not unusual that some EU Member States miss the implementation deadlines for an EU directive, it is fairly exceptional that the CDSM directive will be implemented in less than a hand-full of Member States when it becomes effective on the 7th of June. Unlike in other cases the blame for the failure to meet the deadline, and the resulting legal uncertainty for users, rightholders and service providers will lie squarely with the Commission this time. 

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What has happened so far?

The freshly approved European Delegation Law is a legislative act that authorises and guides the Italian Government to transpose EU Directives and framework decisions into the Italian National Law. Such a Delegation Law must be proposed by the Government at the beginning of each year, with the approval of the European Delegation Law by both the Senate of the Republic and the Chamber of Deputies often taking a long time and occasionally exceeding a year.

Once the Delegation Law is approved, the Government can issue the related Legislative Decrees in order to change the existing laws and adapt them to the European rules. Since the approval of the delegation law and until the adoption of the Legislative Decrees, no change in law actually happens. Such Legislative Decrees are very quick to set into motion, as the Parliament has a few days only to object them; however, sometimes it happens that the Government waits a long time before issuing the Decrees, or it even neglects to issue any of them, forcing the  Parliament to reiterate the Delegation Law  a year later.

Between April 28, 2020 and June 8, 2020, various stakeholder organizations  were listened by the 14th Standing Committee (European Union Policies) during a series of informal hearings, and the related documents and proposals were published by the Senate.

Cultural heritage institutions and civil society associations requested a broad and harmonized implementation of all the mandatory exceptions provided by the European Directive (e.g. text and data mining, digital and cross-border teaching activities, conservation, out of commerce works) as well as an effective implementation of the principle on the protection of the public domain as stated in Art. 14 .

Following the auditions, a number of  amendments to Article 9 of the European Delegation Law (which deals with the implementation of the DSM directive)  were proposed but eventually , most of them were withdrawn while only a  few of them were replaced by non-binding motions.

On October 29, 2020 the European Delegation Law was approved by the Senate and sent to the Chamber of Deputies.

Following the end of term of Conte II Cabinet and the establishment of the new Government led by Mario Draghi, the work pace of the transposition drastically slowed. Some institutional positions were confirmed, such as the Minister of Culture, Dario Franceschini.

The Delegation Law was eventually approved on March 20 2021, by the Chamber of Deputies but the text needed to be approved again by the Senate due to an amendment on a part not related with the DSM Directive. The final approval from the Senate was given on April 20, 2021. 

At the time of writing, the law has been promulgated and it will enter into force on May 8, 2021.

Copyright and the Public Domain in the delegation law

The Delegation Law lists a number of directives to be transposed, but it only gives guidance about some of them, including the implementation of the CDSM directive – addressed in Article 9. 

Article 9 of the implementation law provides the principles for the transposition of articles 3, 5, 8, 10, 15, 16, 17, 20 and 22 of the CDSM Directive only. As a result, the  implementation law doesn’t include the transposition  of Article 14 on the protection of the Public Domain – even though the Italian Law provides a series of norms of different nature on the restriction of images reproducing cultural heritage in the public domain, both in the form of related rights (Italian Copyright Law L. n. 633/1941, articles 87-88) and in the form of other types of limits (Italian Cultural Heritage Code 42/2004, art. 108).

It’s important to note that the rule expressed at Recital 53 provides that “all of that should not prevent cultural heritage institutions from selling reproductions, such as postcards”, and therefore does not limit the principle of article 14. On the contrary, the option provided  by Recital 53 must be considered as a parallel to the principle of protection of the public domain as provided by Article 14.

The meaning of Art. 9 also needs to be read in the broad context: Art. 1 defers to the general principles on the implementation of EU law, as written in law 234/2012, which in turn refers to the Constitution. Art. 32 of law 234/2012, at 1(b), 1(c) and 1(e), provides some additional guidance: it both allows and requires to change any pre-existing law and non-legislative acts; it explicitly prohibits to keep or introduce any restriction which goes beyond the minimum required by EU law (in the original Italian: «non possono prevedere l’introduzione o il  mantenimento  di  livelli  di regolazione superiori  a  quelli  minimi  richiesti  dalle  direttive»).

There is no doubt that the current laws on the reproduction of public domain works in Italy are more restrictive than what is required by the relevant EU Law, therefore the Italian Government has no space  to opt for keeping such a restrictive law.

Conclusion

The European Delegation Law does not explicitly mention the implementation of Art. 14,  but in order  to achieve an effective  transposition of it in the  Italian Law it is necessary to modify all those state laws and other acts representing a limit to the free use of visual artworks in the Public Domain. A distracted or negligent Government might ignore this requirement, but parliamentary proceedings indicate that Parliament is well aware of it and that it did not give its blessing for the Government to ignore it.

We are afraid that a simple copy and paste transposition of  Article 14 may not be able to achieve the effects as encouraged by the Directive. In such a scenario, the achievement of a European Digital Single Market for the free reuse of faithful reproductions of visual artworks in the public domain seems to be far from possible, despite it being one of the main goals of the Directive. Italy would therefore be considered a not-implementing country for not having implemented the letter nor the spirit of the Directive: this would be highly unfortunate as it would require additional work later.

The post The Italian transposition of the CDSM Directive: A missed opportunity? appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

COMMUNIA’s 2012 analysis of the directive showed that it was bound to be a train wreck. A preliminary comparative study of the situation in the UK, the Netherlands, and Italy undertaken by the EnDOW project reveals that the national implementations of the directive across Europe do not provide the much needed solution for the problem of orphan works.

Under the directive, cultural heritage institutions are allowed to publish works online for viewing (not re-use) after a ‘due diligence search’ has been performed, recorded, and submitted to the orphan works database at OHIM. Works that have been registered in this database can then be digitized and made available online under an exception to copyright. So far the project only published its initial results, but we can already see that this piece of legislation will most likely not contribute to large-scale use of orphan works by Europe’s Libraries, Museums & Archives.

The main reason for this is that the diligent search requirements established by the directive have been implemented by member states in such a way that the cost of undertaking a diligent search is prohibitive. The study collected over 210 sources, databases, and registers that need be checked in diligent searches in the UK alone. Researchers from Italy found 357 possible databases and registers. Of the 87 identified sources in the Netherlands, 40 were not freely accessible, and 36 of these required personal contact or a physical visit to an institute. Since the legislation requires cultural heritage institutions to be diligent, they need to check each and every source to be covered by the limited exception provided by the directive.

These results illustrate that the EU approach to orphan works is unreasonably complex and won’t adequately address the problem it’s trying to fix. This is further shown in the actual number of orphan works available through the OHIM Orphan Works Database, which currently only shows 1,435 registered works. More than half of them are in the collection of the Dutch EYE Film Institute (which has worked on rights clearance for these works since at least 2008).

The preliminary results of EnDOW provide evidence that the European Union has failed in this attempt to provide much needed digital access to Europe’s cultural heritage. Given that the Orphan Works Directive does not help with mass digitisation projects, this means that there is a continued need to provide legal mechanisms that allow cultural heritage institutions to make works in their collection available online.

Note: This contribution has been written by Maarten Zeinstra. Maarten is technical advisor to EnDOW. The ideas expressed in this post should not be attributed to EnDOW.

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