On January 1st of every year, new heritage works enter the Public Domain. Unfortunately, oftentimes these works can still end up being inaccessible to the public, despite the fact that, legally speaking, nothing should prevent public access. In order to share experiences and best practices in opening up this material, we co-organise the annual Public […]
We’re excited to join the TAROCH Coalition, a global community effort steered by our member Creative Commons to encourage UNESCO to achieve the adoption of a UNESCO standard-setting instrument to improve open access to cultural heritage. The Coalition is led by representatives of a global, diverse community of organisations and institutions involved in cultural heritage […]
With all the hearings of Commissioners-designate in the books, we present to you our key insights for copyright policy. Unsurprisingly, copyright is only one among many concerns of von der Leyen’s second mandate. Nonetheless, it is a cross-cutting issue that will keep multiple members of her College busy. Two hearings stood out in particular: Ekaterina […]
The EU heads of state or government came together for an informal meeting in Budapest last week to adopt the “Budapest Declaration on the New European Competitiveness Deal” with the goal to strengthen European competitiveness, develop common economic prosperity, and ensure the EU’s sovereignty and global influence. In the declaration, the Council commends the recent […]
This article was first published on the Open Future blog on October 10, 2024. Two weeks ago, the Landgericht Hamburg decided the case LAION vs Kneschke. The latter – a photographer – had sued LAION for including one of his pictures in the LAION-5B training data set, claiming that this amounted to copyright infringement. The […]
On October 2nd, COMMUNIA was invited to contribute to an event by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Future of Work programme in Brussels entitled “Rebooting the debate: Generative AI and creative work.” COMMUNIA President and Open Future Policy Director Paul Keller provided a keynote speech on the current legal framework on copyright and AI, noting that Articles 3 […]
On October 2, COMMUNIA hosted an in-person event in Brussels on why Europe needs a Digital Knowledge Act. A video recording of the event is now available (hosted on Vimeo). The event brought together academics, representatives of civil society and EU policymakers to discuss legislative measures that would enable knowledge institutions, such as libraries, archives, […]
Europe is investing heavily in research and innovation, and for good reason. But we have failed to support these interests by clearing the way for the digital transition of libraries, archives, universities and other knowledge institutions that are essential to promoting progress. We need to prioritise reform that focuses on the needs of these institutions. […]
Five of the biggest publishers in the world, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House, are currently suing the Internet Archive in the US for lending digital scans of books in its collection on a one-copy-one-user basis. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has now confirmed the ruling of […]
The European AI Office’s public consultation Future-Proof AI Act: Trustworthy General-Purpose AI wraps up tomorrow. This multi-stakeholder consultation is aimed at informing the drafting process of the first Code of Practice, which will detail the AI Act rules for providers of general-purpose AI models and general-purpose AI models with systemic risks. Earlier this month COMMUNIA […]
