Yesterday the Brussels-based think tank The Lisbon Council published the policy brief Text and Data Mining for Research and Innovation: What Europe Must Do Next. It was written by Sergey Filippov and Paul Hofheinz. In the paper, the authors analyse contemporary text and data mining (TDM) trends, and make recommendations for how European policymakers can […]
How many European lawyers does it take to explain copyright? Start with 28 and add another dozen, because opinions vary. Even a basic project of explaining key copyright issues to EU citizens in 15 Q&As demonstrates that not only is European copyright fragmented into 28 incompatible systems but also that explaining the law is time-consuming […]
Last month the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from US authors who attempted to overturn a prior decision that Google’s scanning of millions in copyright books amounted to “fair use”. This refusal marks the end of a decade long legal fight about the Google books project. This means that in the US […]
The Commission’s public consultation on whether to grant additional rights to press publishers is aimed at audiences beyond the publishers themselves, to include a wide range of stakeholders – including end users, consumers, and citizens. In this third post of our series on the consultation, we highlight what the introduction of an additional right for […]
The European Commission recently decided to consult stakeholders on their views about two hot topics in the copyright reform discussions in Brussels: ancillary copyright and freedom of panorama. Copyright for Creativity (C4C), has released two short videos to explain what Ancillary Copyright (AC) and Freedom of Panorama (FoP) are about, and why they are important. […]
We just got done submitting our response to the Commission’s public consultation on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. But there’s no rest for the weary. Next up is the consultation on the role of publishers in the copyright value chain and on the ‘panorama exception’. COMMUNIA will be responding to this public consultation, and you […]
The text was written by Katarzyna Strycharz. Since the beginning of the year there’s been a lot of discussion (and confusion too) about whether the Diary of Anne Frank is now in public domain. Under the normal rules regarding the duration of copyright protection, the work should have entered into the public domain on 1 […]
Last week COMMUNIA submitted its response to the European Commission’s public consultation on the evaluation and modernisation of the legal framework for the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR). We believe that the existing Directive fails to adequately address the varying types (and by extension, impact) of activities that would technically constitute copyright infringement. This […]
In the ongoing reform of copyright, the European Commission has presented a conservative approach . There are some alarming ideas being raised, such as ancillary copyright and broadening the scope of internet intermediaries’ liability. If these concepts are translated into policy, it would make copyright even more complicated to understand and the internet a less […]
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 […]
