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BEUC, the European Consumers Association, has just launched a campaign against geo blocking. COMMUNIA has been using this term mainly in order to refer to the practice of limiting access to copyright protected content – such as films or music – to specific national markets. This prevents internet users from outside of that market to […]

We spend a lot of effort pointing out that additional copyright, like rights for specific groups of rights holders, are a problematic concept that has potential to cause a lot of damage to the Public Domain. Most of our coverage has focused on efforts to establish an ancillary copyright for press publishers. We have seen […]

The European Commission is currently holding a consultation on the 2004 directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the online environment (the so called IPRED directive). As the name suggests, this directive deals with the enforcement of copyright – including issues such as injunctions against internet service providers, internet blocking, and warning letters […]

It’s Fair Use Week, and organizations and individuals are publishing blog posts, hosting workshops, and sharing educational media about the implementation and importance of this essential limitation to the rights endowed by copyright. Fair use is a flexible legal tool that permits some uses of copyrighted material without permission from the original rightsholder, such as for use […]

In 2012 the European Parliament adopted the Directive on ‘certain permitted uses of orphan works by cultural heritage institutions’. The directive intends to fill the gap between the mission of cultural heritage institutions to share cultural works to citizens, and the complex, costly, and sometimes impossible task of locating rightsholders to get permission for online […]

While at this stage almost everyone agrees that the EU’s 2001 Copyright Framework is outdated and needs to be reformed, there is a very broad spectrum of ideas of what such a reform should look like. Recently, two of the three EU legislative bodies (who will need to agree on the final outcome) have laid […]

On Monday the 25th of January COMMUNIA organized a Public Domain Day celebration at the European Parliament. The event, which focussed on showcasing creators who have chosen to donate their output to the public domain, was hosted by MEP Felix Reda. The following creators participated in the event and shared their experiences as input at […]

Creating a fully integrated Digital Single Market (DSM) is one of the main priorities of the current European Commission. The commission has outlined its general approach in last years Digital Single Market communication (which we have discussed here). In reaction to this communication the European Parliament has been working on a report. The report on […]

We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of the law, and addressing what’s at stake, and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation. COMMUNIA […]

Communia has published a policy paper on the topic of leveraging copyright in support of education. We contend that exceptions and limitations to copyright for education should support broad access and re-use of copyrighted content of all types in a variety of education settings and across borders. The best way to achieve the proper balance […]