Judith Blijden

Last weekend Communia participated in Mozfest 2018 with a drop-in session on how copyright affects our daily lives. While the ongoing EU copyright reform will shape internet and users rights for ages, not all users are well aware of how this will impact them and the way they use the internet. In our session ‘Human […]

OERs can be used to create inclusive and equitable education and to promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. They are an important factor that contributes to the improvement of educational opportunities. However, while the special impact of OER is clear, often little attention is given to the issue of educational exceptions to copyright. Copyright frameworks […]

The Creative Commons Global Summit is each year one of the key events for the open community. Next week, we are packing our bags and joining over 500 open activists and copyright reform advocates in Toronto. Communia has been founded largely by Creative Commons activists, who wanted to support the Public Domain and do something […]

Today COMMUNIA sent a joint letter to all MEPs working on copyright reform. The letter is an urgent request to improve the education exception in the proposal for a Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market. It is supported by 53 organisations representing schools, libraries, universities and non-formal education, and also 5 individual educators […]

The last weekend of October in London, Mozilla organised Mozfest, its annual festival for the open internet movement. Mozilla wants to enable communities to contribute to making the internet a healthy place. The festival serves as a platform where civil society organisations, artists, journalists, copyright experts and other creators can come together to share and […]

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on the application and impact of the Database Directive on legal protection of databases. The Directive offers copyright protection for original databases and creates a new right called the sui generis right to protect databases on which major investments have been made. In the light of this […]

The copyright reform remains an exceptional opportunity to close the discrepancies between present-day practices and outdated law. One of the pressing issues is solving the legal uncertainty for users and creators online. Creating online is part of our digital culture and whether it is allowed or not, occurs everyday. There continues to be a lack […]

Today, COMMUNIA launches the rightcopyright.eu campaign, asking for support for a better copyright for education. Let’s raise our voices and spread the word about this petition so we can influence our legislators in creating better copyright laws for education. Why we need your help The European Commission has presented a new European copyright law (Draft […]

Catherine Stihler, Rapporteur of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) released her draft opinion on the proposed Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. In this opinion, Stihler rightly states that article 13, which proposes to implement content filter mechanisms that would block some of users’ uploads, fails to achieve its […]

Marc Joulaud, the rapporteur for the Culture and Education Committee of the European Parliament, points out in his draft opinion issued last week that the Commission’s copyright proposal ignores many of the most pressing concerns of internet users. At the same time, he fails to deliver adequate solutions to these problems. In this post we […]