The result is a version of the Commission’s proposal that is even more out of balance than the original. The rights-holder lobby has managed to capture the Member States to advance their agenda to the detriment of the interests of internet users in the EU and in complete disregard of the original intention to further harmonise the fragmented EU copyright rules:

• Over the past one and a half years the Member States, driven by a mediterranean maximalist coalition (France, Italy, Spain and Portugal) have doubled down on the Commission’s highly problematic proposal to impose upload filters for open internet platforms. As we have explained here, the version of Article 13 adopted by the Member States would create a new parallel liability regime that puts the creative expression of platform users at the mercy of a censorship machine run by platform operators in collusion with rightsholders.
• Driven by the same mediterranean maximalist coalition the Member States have insisted on a narrow, innovation-hostile exception for Text and Data Mining. This approach flies in the face of the EU wide ambition to become an important player in the area of machine learning and artificial intelligence. At the insistence of more forward-looking Member States the Council text also includes an optional exception that allows TDM for a wider set of purposes and beneficiaries, but this comes at the cost of further splintering user rights in the EU.
• Under intense pressure from Germany the Member States have maintained the introduction of a new ancillary copyright for press publishers against a near-universal academic consensus that such a right will endanger the freedom of information without benefitting press publishers. In a small improvement of the Commission’s proposal the new right would now last for a maximum of 2 years and would not apply retroactively.

There are a few areas where the Member States are proposing improvements to the Commission’s proposal (such as a more streamlined process that would allow cultural heritage institutions to make out-of-commerce works available online, and a new, albeit optional, paragraph providing a legal basis for extended collective licensing) but in general the Member States have missed the opportunity to fix the Commission’s flawed original proposal.

In adopting this text the Member States have made it clear that they do not care for user rights and that they see copyright law as an instrument to protect legacy business models in the publishing and entertainment industries at the expense of education, research and public access to cultural heritage. If adopted, the Council text would drive Europe further away from a true Digital Single Market in which users across Europe have the same rights, and it fails to provide a legal framework that embraces technological innovation.

It is now up to the European Parliament to save users’ rights

All of this raises the stakes for the European Parliament. MEPs are under intense pressure to finalise their position at the end of June. With the Member States ignoring the interests of users and more or less completely siding with the interests of rightsholders, the Parliament needs to put forward a version that can counterbalance the one sided approach championed by both the Commission and the Member States. If they no not want to lose credibility MEPs need to advance proposals to safeguard the rights of European citizens, harmonise the splintered EU copyright rules, and reject demands for additional rights that will hurt European internet users.

A Digital Single Market that benefits the citizens of Europe is incompatible with privatized censorship filters or an ancillary copyright that limits the ability to share information. What is needed instead are harmonised exceptions that allow citizen across Europe to leverage digital tools for education, provide them with better access to our shared cultural heritage and allow them freely research and innovate.

Unfortunately the discussions in the JURI committee currently point in the opposite direction. Therefore it is high time to remind MEPs that they have been elected to represent the interests of citizens and should not join the Member States in promoting the special interests of the entertainment and publishing industries. You can do so right now ee via Mozilla’s ChangeCopyright tool.

The post Member States adopt negotiation position, side with rightsholders in attack on user rights appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

CEDRO decided that per each active user per day it wants to charge a daily rate of € 0,05044854. We can endlessly discuss if this arbitrary rate is a lot or not much per user-day. But this is where the economy of scale of 5 cents is pivotal – Menéame, a Spanish aggregator has an average of 139 thousand unique users accessing their site per day. So 5 cents scales up to a quite substantial 7+ thousand euro per day and that to an astronomic 2,56 million euro per year.

The problem is that this is 20 times as much as Menéame’s annual turnover (125 thousand euro). In short, a piece of legislation aimed at Google chokeholds smaller enterprises while reinforcing the giant’s dominant position.

What is perhaps worse, we have landed in this mess based on false assumptions: whatever affects the traffic to news content (could it be the decreasing quality of the news and proliferation of meaningless clickbait? Hmmm…) it is not the aggregators. As research shows they in fact assist users in optimizing their attention economy and in result sustain the traffic.

Based on these false assumptions the publishers want to racket sums that have nothing to do with the economic situation or the scale of operations of the aggregators in a strive to compensate an imaginary loss by ripping off those who in fact help news readership. By doing so the rightsholders resemble thugs that raid a bar and extort payments only because the bar is in their neighborhood.

Say no to the racketeer tax in EU!

Now, thanks to the European Commission’s copyright directive proposal we are facing the danger of that mess spilling all over Europe. If you feel you’d like to do something about this, write an email to Members of the European Parliament from your country to kick off article 11 from the copyright directive proposal. There is still time to stop this nonsense.

The post Evidence from Spain shows that new rights for publishers become a racketeer tax appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Wednesday’s hearing (recording) focussed on one of the most controversial issues of proposed Directive, the measures for filtering and blocking user uploaded content contained in article 13. These are supposed to address a so-called “value gap” caused by online platforms that allow users to share content online. The Commission has bought into the rightsholders narrative, although evidence why these measures are necessary is still lacking.

The wrong answer to online creativity: privatised censorship and filtering

As our friends at EDRi have pointed out in painstaking detail, such an obligation to monitor and filter is at odds with other EU laws and with jurisprudence from the Court of Justice of the EU, and would negatively impact the freedom of expression online.

During Wednesday’s hearing, BEUC (the European Consumer Organisation) presented these concerns and highlighted the fact that these measures are discussed in a context where internet users across Europe lack legal clarity with regards to what they can or cannot do with copyrighted content (see slide 7 of BEUC’s presentation).

It is absurd that the European Commission is proposing measures for filtering and censoring user-uploaded content based on criteria delivered by rightsholders while Europe is still lacking clear rules for non-commercial remixing and other transformative uses. The system will not only be used to censor the net, but will also further burden users with unclear copyright law.

Undermining the right to link

Unfortunately Wednesday’s hearing did not provide a forum to address such concerns. Instead it served as a reminder that there are plenty of stakeholders out there who think that the Commission’s proposal does not go far enough. An example of this was the final presentation of the day by CEPIC (which represents image libraries). CEPIC welcomed the Commission’s proposal but pointed out that it was insufficient as it did not change the copyright rules to make embedding of already published materials illegal.

Attempts by rightsholders to limit the ability to link freely are nothing new.  CEPIC’s attempts to undermine the right to link are part of a much broader effort. Over the past few weeks Collective Management Organisations have been raising this issue in mass mails targeted at MEPs. If you want to tell MEPs that preserving the right to link is important to you, you can do so via this tool provided by Save the Link.

An uphill battle

The EU parliament is not the only EU institution discussing the Commission’s proposal. In parallel the Council has also started discussing the proposal. While the discussions in the Council take place behind closed doors, the French government has made it clear that it considers the Commission’s plans for dealing with the so-called “value gap” insufficient and that it would like to see much more draconian measures to be imposed. In an information note on the Reform of the European copyright framework from early November the French delegation notes (emphasis ours) :

Fair sharing of value between creators and intermediaries who publish protected works online on a massive scale represents, in particular, a vital issue. We feel that it would be worth consolidating and expanding the Commission’s interesting proposals on this matter by clarifying the status of these activities in copyright terms, particularly the right of communication to the public and adequate accountability for these intermediaries, in cooperation with right holders

In other words, the French would like to see online platforms stripped of their intermediary privilege and create a situation where sharing of content will always require the explicit permission of rightsholders. Such an outcome would dramatically limit the way Internet users can share and reuse content and give rightsholders unprecedented control over online expression.

Both the CEPIC position at the JURI hearing and the French note should serve as an important reminder that things can potentially get much worse than what is contained in the Commission’s proposal and that there is much work ahead when it comes to preserving the Internet as an open communication platform.

The post As the European Parliament starts discussing copyright proposal, rightsholders point out they want even worse © rules appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

This will be welcome news to rightsholders who have been aggressively pushing for such a limitation to the freedom to link in the past as evidenced by amendments to the Reda report. While the EU parliament ultimately rejected these attempts the Court of Justice has partially granted them through the back door via yesterday’s decision.

As Felix Reda has already pointed out the decision is especially worrying in the context that publishers have also aggressively lobbying for the introduction of additional rights. We have repeatedly pointed out that this must be seen as another effort to gain more control over what users can or cannot do online by attacking the freedom to link.

It shows a remarkable amount of hypocrisy that the European Publisher Council refuses allegations that a new publishers right would affect linking…

“Nothing we are asking for would affect the way that our readers access publishers’ content, or share links on social media or via apps and email to friends and family”

…while one of their members has just gotten the highest court of the EU to declare that linking can in fact be illegal. Two weeks before the Commission is expected to propose an ancillary copyright for publishers, yesterday’s CJEU ruling provides us with another piece of evidence that such a right will be used by publishers as another piece in their strategy to limit who information can be accessed and shared online.

The post CJEU ruling on hyperlinking shows publishers hypocrisy appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Today we have relayed these concerns in letters to First Vice President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans (who is in charge of the better regulation agenda) and Members of the European Parliament. These letters are supported by 29 organisations representing civil society, news publishers, consumers and the digital industry share their concerns regarding the European Commission’s approach in consulting on copyright matters. The letter makes it clear that we are not the only ones who consider the online platforms consultation to be flawed:

The Commission’s “Online Platforms consultation” includes some questions on copyright, which had not previously been the subject of consultation. However, critical questions dealing with the creation of new, controversial copyrights for publishers are only open to right holders to answer, denying European citizens and relevant stakeholders the right to be heard. Further, the Commission is set to adopt a Communication on Copyright on 9th December, which covers these issues, before the end of the consultation and a proper analysis of the contributions received.

The letter letter to VP Timmermans urges the commission to uphold its own better regulation principles, and  to ensure that:

• Communications are not released before the end of consultations that are relevant to the subject at hand, and that detailed impact assessments are published before legislative proposals;
• All EU citizens, associations and businesses can participate in Commission consultations and that they are able to respond to any of the questions posed in them;
• Detailed impact assessments are published before legislative proposals;

The first of these points is a reference to the Commission’s plan to adopt its communication on copyright on the 9th of December – long before the consultation closes on the 30th of December. Given that the communication is known to also address issues related to the regulatory environment for online platforms, the timing of the communication casts serious doubts on the willingness of the Commission to listen to public input from stakeholders.

This is made even worse by the fact that Internet users have made it clear that they do care about the copyright rules for platforms. In less than a week Save the Link’s Internet voice tool has received input from more than 9.000 end users expressing their views on key issues covered by the Commission’s platform legislation. They (and all other stakeholders involved in this debate) deserve to be heard by the Commission before the Commission makes up its mind on how to approach the long overdue modernisation of the EU copyright rules.

The post Open Letter on the Commission’s flawed Online Platform Consultation appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

So while the report is a clear signal that MEPs want to see a modernisation of the EU copyright rules that date back to 2001, it is much less clear what shape these modernised rules should take. Most of the report is based on compromises that MEP Reda has brokered between all major political groups represented in the EP. As a result, the report does not outline a clear plan for reforming copyright. Still, it is possible to distill from it a number of things that MEPs clearly both want and don’t want to see in the reform proposal. It is also clear that pressure from civil society – related to such issues as Freedom of of Panorama, hyperlinking or ancillary copyright, helped avert worst amendments to the report.

MEPs do not want to see further limitations of user rights.

Attempts have  been made to include language that would limit the rights of end users. Fortunately all of these attempts failed. The majority of MEPs is clearly unwilling to further limit the ability of citizens and other users to interact with copyright protected material.

The issue that got the most attention was a proposed limitation of the ‘Freedom of Panorama’ to just non-commercial uses. After massive protests from citizens, photographers and civil society groups this limitation was removed in the plenary vote. Also an attempt to undermine the right to link, driven by EPP MEPs was de-fused in the Legal Affairs committee.

Finally, repeated attempts by the German EPP MEP Angelika Niebler to introduce language that would call on the Commission to introduce an EU wide ancillary copyright for press publishers were voted down first by the Legal Affairs committee and again yesterday by the plenum of the European Parliament. Clearly MEPs do not want to hand out special privileges to press publishers that have failed to do any good in the two member states where they have been introduced so far (Germany and Spain).

What MEPs want

MEPs have been much more cautious when it comes to identifying areas where they want to see change. Chief among them is the desire to end geoblocking practices and to ensure that citizens have access to online services regardless of where they are in the EU. This issue overlaps with one of the stated priorities of the Commission, so we can expect it to be  be addressed by the upcoming Legislative proposal. The same is true for the call of the EP to introduce a new exception to copyright that will allow Text and Data Mining (TDM) for research purposes. Parliament has sided with researchers and librarians, who have been arguing that the ability of European researchers to conduct TDM should not be made conditional on obtaining a license first.

MEPs have also made it clear that they want to see copyright rules that allow cultural heritage institutions to share collections online which is an issue that the Commission has been silent on so far. Having a clear political majority for an expansion of exceptions benefiting Libraries, Archives and Museums will hopefully convince the Commission to include this issue the upcoming proposal.

Finally MEPs have clearly expressed that they want EU copyright rules to better protect the Public Domain, by asking the Commission to “ensure that once a work is in the public domain, any digitisation of the work which does not constitute a new, transformative work, stays in the public domain”. This is of course a position that we have been advocating for a while and it is good to see MEPs realizing the importance of protecting the Public Domain.

What MEPs should have done

While there are a number of very welcome elements in the report, it disappoints as a whole. As part of the compromise, statements supporting harmonisation of user rights across the EU have been removed and not even core user rights are seen as mandatory. This is unfortunate, as it will be impossible to build a Digital Single Market (and Public Space) if rules for use of copyrighted works are different in each member state.

It is clear that MEPs have caved to pressure from national governments and national interest groups to keep in place the current system of voluntary exceptions. Lets hope that the Commission in its attempt to build a Digital Single Market will be more ambitious.

The other area where MEPs have failed is to recognize the fact that existing exceptions and limitations are often outdated and need to be updated to reflect the realities of the digital environment. In no area is this more clear than in the area of quotation rights. MEP Reda’s draft report contained a call to expand the quotation right to include quotations of audiovisual works, which has fallen victim to the compromise between the political parties. It does not reflect well on the European Parliament that it fails to take into account a reality where citizens increasingly express themselves and communicate with each other not only via written texts but in audio and video.

What will the Commission do?

The ball is now squarely in the court of the European Commission. Felix Reda’s report is showing them the contours of what the Parliament is willing to support, but also leaves plenty of space for additional progressive proposals. The Commission needs to be more ambitious if it wants to establish a Digital Single Market. A modern copyright law, fit to regulate social and technological realities of today, needs to be based on a clear vision. The idea of the Digital Single Market, with its underlying concept of a freedom of flows within Europe, provides such vision – it remains to be seen whether it will be properly applied to the field of copyright. If the Commission wants to ensure that the new rules are not outdated as soon as they come into effect, the proposal needs to be based on a strong belief in openness and flexibility of the European copyright system.

The post European Parliament adopts Reda report, fails to demand real copyright reform appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

While many internet users may take for granted that no one requires permission or is forced to pay a fee to link to another place online. But this isn’t the case everywhere. Copyrighted content holders (including news organizations, media, and entertainment sites) around the world are working to remove the right to free and open linking, and the threat is more present than you may think.

Today a coalition of over 50 organizations (including COMMUNIA) from 21 countries are launching Savethelink.org. The campaign aims to raise awareness about the issue and prompt action to urge decision makers to protect the practice of free and open linking online.

COMMUNIA representative Lisette Kalshoven, Kennisland Advisor on copyright, heritage and open education, said, “Europe is in danger of limiting access to culture and knowledge by undermining the right to link.”

An example of how restricting access to links is already in place in Spain, where the Spanish government passed a law that “requires services which post links and excerpts of news articles to pay a fee to the organisation representing Spanish newspapers.” In our response to the Spanish law, we questioned what will happen to publishers who wish to share their works as widely as possible (such as sharing under Creative Commons licenses), or who have adopted business models that don’t rely on limiting access to their creative work, because the new rights created by the law are unwaivable.

It’s clear that this type of pseudo-copyright law was intended to protect the revenue flows of incumbent Spanish media publishers. However, you have to question whether such a practice might have backfired for publishers who wanted to use the new rule as a means to monetize access to their content. It’s quite telling that Google News–which funnels significant traffic to media websites–shut down in Spain shortly after the law was passed, citing concerns that allowing rights holders to charge for access to links would have been an unworkable practice for them.

Last year’s public consultation on the review of European copyright rules also  contained a question on the right to link:

Should the provision of a hyperlink leading to a work or other subject matter protected under copyright, either in general or under specific circumstances, be subject to the authorisation of the rightholder?

Many groups, including COMMUNIA, responded that allowing rights holders to control access to links would be a terrible idea.

In no circumstance should hyperlinks be subject to protection under copyright. Sharing links without needing permission from the rightsholder is core to the operation of the internet. Changing this fundamental structural aspect of how the internet works would be detrimental to the free flow of information and commerce online.

Unfortunately understanding of the value of hyperlinks is not shared by all stakeholders in the discussions about new EU copyright rules. This is illustrated by a large numbers of amendments to the MEP Reda’s draft report on the implementation of EU copyright directive. MEP Reda’s draft report contained clear language intended to unambiguously enshrine the right to link:

[The European Parliament] stresses that the ability to freely link from one resource to another is one of the fundamental building blocks of the internet; calls on the EU legislator to make it clear that reference to works by means of a hyperlink is not subject to exclusive rights, as it does not consist in a communication to a new public

In response to this passage, 12 amendments have been tabled that either propose to delete this passage from Julia Reda’s report or propose changes to the language that try to limit the scope of the right to link to a right to link to content that has been legally made available.

While such a qualification does not sound like a big change it fundamentally changes the nature of linking on the internet as it places the the burden of figuring out if a link target is legal or not on the person placing a link. Given that link targets are not static this is impossible to do with certainty and means that linking will become an activity that carries considerable legal risk. This would undermine the ability of many citizens, non profit organisations and small companies to run a website that taps into the fabric of the internet and has the potential to kill the internet as we know it.

If you don’t want this to happen you should get in touch with your MEP and support Savethelink.org.

You can sign the petition at Savethelink.org. Read the press release here. Organizations wishing to join the coalition can join here.

The post Don’t mess with the right to link: Savethelink.org appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

While the JURI committee is trying to arrive at compromise amendments ahead of the vote on 6 May we thought that it would be useful to highlight the best and worst amendments that have been tabled in reaction to the report. The main criteria for identifying the best/worst amendments are our 2011 policy recommendations and our recent position paper on the on the review of the EU copyright laws. As the vast majority of the amendments are attempting to reverse the positions expressed in Reda’s draft report, the 15 amendments highlighted below can only offer a glimpse of what is at stake. So while we are recommending to vote against the 10 worst amendments listed below, this is by no means a complete voting list as there are many others which are just as bad (and some that are slightly better).

The ten worst amendments…

#1 We don’t care for the Public Domain

Easily the worst amendment (or rather set of amendments, since there are multiple identical versions of this one) is AM 252 that proposes to delete Paragraph 6 of the draft report.This paragraph calls on the Commission to safeguard the Public Domain and to recognise the freedom of rights holders to voluntarily relinquish their rights and dedicate works to the Public Domain. At least the first part of the original paragraph should be something that every participant in the discussion about the future of the EU copyright rules can agree with, unless there are really people who want to ensure that all culture and information is privately owned.

#2 No freedom to link

Another amendment that would fundamentally undermine the public good is AM 409. By putting the burden of figuring out if the target of a (hyper)link is ‘freely available’ and by proposing to make online intermediaries liable for links to ‘illicit content’, the amendment undermines one of the most fundamental building blocks of the open internet: the right to freely link to other resources on the net. Unfortunately this amendment is not alone; there is a whole range of them that try to limit the right to link.

#3 Longer protection for neighbouring rights

Given that this would mean a reduction of the term of protection from 70 to 50 years after the death of the author, it is not entirely unexpected that MEP Reda’s call ‘to harmonise the term of protection of copyright to a duration that does not exceed the current international standards set out in the Berne Convention’ has been met with a lot of resistance. Several amendments propose to delete paragraph 7, or suggest that the current term of protection should be maintained. This particular amendment–introduced by MEPs Virginie Rozière and Jean-Marie Cavada–goes even further in suggesting that the term of protection for related rights holders should also be harmonized (increasing the term length, one would assume). We’ve argued in our policy recommendations that current terms of protection for neighbouring rights and for copyright are way too long already and should be reduced.

#4 No freedom of panorama

The original proposal by Reda calls on the EU legislator to ensure that all Member States introduce a freedom of panorama exception in their copyright laws. In the current situation some Member States allow anyone to take pictures and videos of copyrighted works (such as buildings) that are visible from a public space, while others don’t. With this amendment MEP Cavada tries to turn Felix Reda’s intention on its head as this would mean that prior permission from the rightholders would need to be obtained in all Member States.

#5 Public sector information does not belong to the public

A large number of MEPs have suggested to delete paragraph 5, which deals with the re-use of public sector information. The reason for this is generally explained by claiming that the re-use of public sector information is regulated by another EU Directive. However, deleting this paragraph does not fix the current situation in which each Member State has other rules with regard to the re-use of public sector information, which can severely limit the re-use of publicly-funded government information. As we have argued in our policy recommendation #13, the best way to ensure that public sector information can be used by anyone for any purpose is to ensure that it is not covered by copyright in the first place. This is echoed MEP Reda in her report.

#6 You can’t text and data mine anything without a license

Here’s another example of an amendment that turns the original text on its head. This amendment by MEP Nieber (which stands in for a large number of similar ones) reverses the intention of MEP Reda’s proposal. Where the original text tries to establish the principle that the right to read is the right to (data)mine, MEP Nieber’s amendment would mean that researchers need to obtain licenses before they can conduct text and data mining on protected works. This means that researchers will need to pay twice for accessing the same works and puts EU-based researchers at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis colleagues in other countries where text and data mining does not require separate permissions from rights holders.

#7 No Harmonisation please (1)

Amendment 312 (and many similar ones) attempts to change the central narrative of Felix Reda’s report. The original text points out that if Member States are free to choose if and how they implement an exception contained in the copyright directive, it could create problems such as legal uncertainty. Instead this amendment argues that the flexibility awarded to national legislators allows a diversity of cultural policies. In doing so this amendment ignores the central problem of the approach taken by the copyright directive, which results in a system where acts that are legal in one Member State could be illegal another Member State. This deprives citizens in many Member States of rights they should enjoy, and complicates many cross-border activities.

#8 No Harmonisation please (2)

This amendment is the logical result of the preceding one. It wants to remove Reda’s suggestion that exceptions and limitations should be made mandatory across Member States, instead of the current situation where a Member State has the option to implement (or not) the exception. Given that all exceptions and limitations contained in the copyright directive are by definition not harmful to the interests of rightholders, there is no good reason to not apply them uniformly in all Member States. Harmonizing the exceptions and limitations of the copyright directive is an important part of creating a digital single market that not only serves the interests of rights holders and intermediaries, but also takes the interests of citizens and society at large into account. It also is in line with our policy recommendation #3.

#9 DRM über alles!

This may be the most brazen example of turning Reda’s original text on its head. Where the original text stresses the need to ensure that user rights that are conferred by law cannot simply be taken away by way of technological protection measures (a.k.a. DRM), the amendment encourages this very behavior. Adopting the amended language would give carte blanche to rights holders to use technology to undermine user rights and establish their own copyright rules. As we argue in our policy recommendation #5 this would be highly detrimental to the public domain.

#10 Extra rights for press publishers please

As expected, there are also a number of amendments that urge the Commission to explore the possibility of introducing a European neighbouring right for press publishers. This particular amendment attempts to apply the following logic: Press publishers deserve a neighbouring right because other types of rights holders have neighbouring rights. This reasoning is quite obviously flawed but also extremely dangerous as it opens the door for other groups of rights holders (such as broadcasters) to come and request their ‘own’ type of neighbouring rights. While it is highly unlikely that press publishers will gain anything from such a right, it is clear that it would further erode the public domain.

… and the five best amendments tabled in JURI

With a total of 556 amendments there also needs to be some good ones. Unfortunately, amendments that improve on Felix Reda’s report are much fewer in number than the ones undermining it, and come from a much smaller number of MEPs. Here are the 5 best amendments:

#1 What is in the public domain, must remain in the public domain

Amendment 264 – put forth by MEPs Felix Rdea, Victor Negrescu and Josef Weidenholzer (yes MEPs are allowed to table amendments to their own reports) – expands paragraph 6 with a call on the Commission ‘to clarify that once a work is in the public domain, any digitisation of the work which does not constitute a new, transformative work, stays in the public domain’. This is fully in line with our policy recommendation #5 and with the Europeana Public Domain Charter. Unfortunately, this is something that is not universally recognized by cultural heritage institutions across Europe. In this situation a clarification along the lines of what is proposed in this amendment seems very much needed.

#2 Online access to out of commerce works in the collections of cultural heritage institutions

Speaking of cultural heritage institutions, one of the biggest flaws of Felix Reda’s draft report is the fact that it did not contain a recommendation related to the problems faced by cultural heritage institutions when they try to make their collections available online. This amendment tabled by MEP Marietje Schaake proposes to add a call to the Commission to enable these institutions to make available those works in their collections that are not in commercial circulation available online. This is in line with the demands voiced by the cultural heritage sector and our policy recommendation #10. It should be a uncontroversial addition to the report.

#3 Registration please!

Here’s another addition by Felix Reda to his own report. This amendment makes the case for encouraging the registration of works in order to receive copyright protection. As evidenced by our policy recommendation #8, we consider registration an important element of a modern copyright system that focuses on protecting rights where this is desirable, and which minimizes the unwanted protection of works of authorship. Encouraging registration of works as proposed by this amendment is a good first step in this direction.

#4 not just mandatory but also uniform

This amendment provides a small but important addition to paragraph 11 of the draft report. As outlined above, we think that making all exceptions and limitations mandatory is an important step towards a truly European copyright system, but that is only half of the work. In the current situation Member States are not only free to chose if they want to implement an exception, but they also have substantial freedom in determining how they want to implement a particular exception. As a result exceptions are not uniformly implemented across Member States. Adding the words ‘uniform and’ to the text of the draft report addresses this problem.

#5 No contractual override of limitations and exceptions

Finally, another small but important addition is this amendment dealing with the recommendation to protect exceptions and limitation from being overridden by technical protection measures. If adopted, this amendment would ensure that the same sort of protection also applies to contractual terms that attempt to override the user rights granted by exceptions or limitations.

What next?

The vote in JURI on the amendments is currently scheduled for the 6th of May. This means that discussions on compromise amendments are currently taking place between the different political groups. If you want to help with ensuring that the final report calls for a meaningful reform of the EU copyright rules that strengthens the Public Domain then you should get in touch with MEPs that are part of the Legal Affairs Committee, point out some personal problems you would have if the amendments listed in the first section passed and try to get them to support the amendments in the second section. It helps if you contact a MEP from your own country or language group, as this makes communication usually easier. At this late stage in the process it is also advisable to call rather than write, as mailboxes have already been filled. You can also find a more comprehensive list of voting recommendations prepared by EDRi here.

The post Reda report: the 10 worst and the 5 best amendments appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.