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Many people recognise the value of works which are in the public domain and may even be familiar with many initiatives that provide access to public domain works (such as the Internet Archive, Wikimedia Commons, Project Gutenberg, etc). Yet, many people do not have a very clear conception of what the public domain is or […]
Copyright Week provides a timely opportunity to reflect on Communia’s mission to preserve the public domain and our common heritage against copyright extension, misleading attempts to privatize public domain works, the shrinking of users’ rights, and the general trend in extending the scope of copyright in ways detrimental to the production of culture and knowledge. […]
Last week Thursday the European Commission launched its much anticipated public consultation on the review of the EU copyright rules. This consultation is the first visible sign of the second track of the Commission’s attempt to modernise the EU rules (the first track consisted of the rather unsuccessful Licenses for Europe stakeholder dialogue). In the […]
The Communia Association has responded to the European Commission’s consultation on recommended standard licenses, datasets and charging for the re-use of public sector information (PSI). The Commission asked for comments on these issues in light of the adoption of the new Directive on re-use of public sector information. See our response here. The Directive 1) brings […]
Today Creative Commons (CC), the US non-profit that publishes the Creative Commons licenses (and Communia Member) has published a statement in support of copyright reform. This step comes after a year long discussion on how Creative Commons, which has traditionally defined itself as a neutral steward of the CC Licenses, should relate to ongoing discussions […]
The post below is cross posted from Kennisland (Kennisland is a COMMUNIA member). Last month, the Office for the Harmonization of the Internal market (OHIM) and the European Patent Office (EPO) published a study on intellectual property rights intensive industries’ contribution to the economic performance and Employment in the European Union. The study is modelled […]
Yesterday, the European Parliament formally adopted the updated directive on the reuse of public sector information. The announcement confirms the draft changes made to the directive in April of this year. Some notable changes (see here for a more comprehensive breakdown of the changes): libraries, museums, and archives are now be covered under the directive […]
Last week the Lisbon Council published a new Policy Brief on Copyright Reform for Growth and Jobs: Modernising the European Copyright Framework. In the policy brief Ian Hargreaves and Bernt Hugenholtz draw up an agenda for copyright reform in the European Union by proposing a menu of policy options that could be implemented relatively quickly. […]
COMMUNIA, along with several other representatives from the research sector, has withdrawn from the Licences for Europe dialogue on text and data mining due to concerns about the scope, composition and transparency of the process. A letter of withdrawal has been sent to the Commissioners involved in Licenses for Europe explaining the reason that these […]
The proposal for a Directive on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online uses in the internal market is now awaiting first (and single) reading by the European Parliament (indicatively foreseen in November). According to the European ordinary legislative process (the Directive proposal is following […]
