Last week’s Communication from the Commission did not explicitly state that they plan to introduce ancillary copyright in Europe, but it was very easy to read between the lines. Research in Spain has shown (and again in Germany) that ancillary copyright is good for no-one, so the echoes from the Commission about considering the introduction […]
On Tuesday Creative Commons released its 2015 State of the Commons report. The annual report showcases data and trends about the growth and diversity of the commons. Creative Commons—which is a founding member of COMMUNIA— reported a major milestone this year: over 1.1 billion CC licensed photos, videos, audio tracks, educational materials, research articles, 3D […]
Last month we wrote about how the European Commission is running a consultation on the ‘Regulatory environment for platforms, online intermediaries, data and cloud computing and the collaborative economy’. While this is an important opportunity to provide feedback, it’s not been easy for individuals to parse the Commission’s long and complicated questionnaire. The Copyright4Creativity coalition […]
Is it dangerous to take a public domain picture from Wikipedia and use it on your blog or print it on a T-shirt? Last week we wrote about a copyright case in Germany where several users of public domain pictures received letters from the lawyers of Mannheim’s Reiss-Engelhorn museum. The letters demanded payment for the […]
It is not often that we find ourselves in agreement with the copyright policy positions of government entities entrusted with maintaining the copyright rules. Given this it is somewhat of a rare find to discover the UK Intelllectual Property Office (IPO) has recently thrown its full weight behind our policy recommendation #5 (‘Digital reproductions of works […]
Above is the Portrait of Richard Wagner by Cäsar Willich, one of the contested images. Yesterday the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland announced that they’re fighting a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the Reiss Engelhorn Museum. The German museum is suing Wikimedia for publishing digital reproductions of public domain artworks from its collection on Wikipedia. The […]
Last week we have pointed out our concerns about a number of copyright related questions buried deep inside the EU commission’s ongoing consultation on the ‘Regulatory environment for platforms, online intermediaries, data and cloud computing and the collaborative economy‘. Our main points were that the consultation does not adequately address the effects of regulatory measures […]
COMMUNIA has opened a new line of communication: copyright untangled where we discuss copyright and education. The aim of the series is to provide context on the state of play on copyright and education in the EU, while keeping it understandable for people who are not very familiar with copyright law, the legislative process or the […]
European copyright law reform enters its decisive phase. Changes will be proposed by the Commission in the coming months, and will determine the shape of European law for many years. Activists involved in copyright reform from across Europe met last week in Warsaw to discuss this subject. During the meeting we worked to expand the […]
The recent infight between the world’s largest academic publishing company, Elsevier, and (soon: former) editors of one their journals over attempts to make the journal open access – that is, freely available online – demonstrates the potential power of editorial boards in shaping the digital future of academic publishing. The academic publishing system runs on […]
