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In our capacity of permanent observers of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, we are attending the 36th session of the Committee, which is taking place in Geneva from 28 May to 1 June 2018. The following is the statement made by Teresa Nobre on our behalf on agenda item 5: Protection […]

Last week we pointed out that when it comes to Article 13 both the version discussed (and since adopted) by the Member States in the Council and the compromise proposals discussed in the European Parliament’s JURI Committee are pretty terrible. In light of the negotiation mandate adopted by the Member States last week the only […]

Last Friday the Committee of Permanent representatives of the Council (COREPER) agreed on a negotiating mandate for the proposed Copyright in the Digital Single Market directive. The agreed upon text does not substantially differ from the latest compromise proposals that we have discussed here before. Unfortunately that means that the Member States have agreed on […]

As the summer break draws closer both the European Parliament and the Council are intensifying their efforts to wrap up their positions on the proposed Copyright in the Digital Single Market directive. In both legislative bodies Article 13 (the upload filters for online platforms) remains the main stumbling block and both the Bulgarian Council presidency […]

We recently released our new report “Educational Licences in Europe”, where we analyzed 10 collective agreements in Finland, France, and the United Kingdom. This study shows that educational licences for using copyrighted content in schools include many terms and conditions that restrict users’ rights and that are unfair or unreasonable. While the small number of agreements analyzed […]

A few weeks ago the European Commission published a study on the ongoing evaluation of the Database Directive. The report was led by the Joint Institute for Innovation Policy, and contains an analysis of last year’s public consultation, as well as information from expert interviews and a stakeholders’ workshop. The Commission’s evaluation study confirms some […]

During the recent high-level conference on copyright in higher education, which we organized with the European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE) and the European Federation of Education Employers (EFEE), we had the pleasure of hosting MEP Alex Voss. It was a rare opportunity for us to hear the rapporteur for the Copyright in the […]

Today, Communia and 145 organisations published an open letter to the Committee of the Permanent Representatives of the Governments of the Member States to the European Union (COREPER). That group meets tomorrow, and the Bulgarian presidency will be pushing for all Member States to endorse its proposed changes to the draft Directive on Copyright in […]

We still can’t believe how bad the last plan of MEP Axel Voss for the press publishers right is. At the end on March MEP Voss released his proposal for a compromise on Article 11, and the changes he is proposing are even more radical and more broken than anything we’ve seen thus far. It’s time for everyone […]

It is still unclear if the Bulgarian Council presidency will manage to get the member states in line to agree on a general negotiation position at the COREPER meeting scheduled for this Thursday. Under pressure from the Bulgarian presidency (or rather those who put pressure on them), the member states seem to be moving towards […]