On 1 June at 14:00 CEST, COMMUNIA will host an in-person event at TownHall Europe in Brussels exploring one of the most pressing challenges facing Europe’s knowledge ecosystem: how legal uncertainty around copyright affects research, libraries, and public-interest AI development. What to expect? Across Europe, universities, research organisations, libraries, and archives rely on copyrighted materials […]
Today we are releasing The Post-DSM Copyright Report (available as PDF here). This report analyses how Member States have implemented key user rights provisions of the DSM Directive: text and data mining rights, education rights, cultural heritage rights, the Public Domain safeguard, protections against overrides, limits to the press publishers’ right, and user rights safeguards […]
As part of the Digital Omnibus Proposal, the Commission proposes to integrate the provisions of the Open Data Directive (2019/1024) into an expanded Data Act. While the Commission proposal argues that the changes introduced through this process are merely technical in nature, this process provides the opportunity to review and fix parts of the existing […]
Seven years after its adoption, the DSM Directive is undergoing its scheduled review. The European Commission is assessing whether the Directive has met its objectives and whether reform is needed. At COMMUNIA, we have asked ourselves the same questions. Curious to hear where we landed? Join our online COMMUNIA Salon on 7 May at 15:00 […]
At the 47th session of WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), the African Group tabled a proposal for an instrument on limitations and exceptions aimed at supporting education, research, cultural heritage, and access for persons with disabilities. For years, discussions at SCCR on limitations and exceptions have been marked by resistance from […]
Last year, Denmark introduced amendments to its Copyright Act granting copyright-like protection to individuals’ personal characteristics and digital imitations of performances. As we argued during the public consultation, while the objective of this initiative—to protect individuals and performing artists against AI-generated deepfakes—is commendable, copyright is not the appropriate legal framework to address these concerns. In […]
On 5 February, the magnificent Great Hall of the prestigious Academy of Sciences of Lisbon hosted Portugal’s first conference on Secondary Publication Rights (SPR). Not even an extraordinary storm that struck Lisbon for several days could prevent an afternoon of lively discussion on the role legislation should play in advancing Open Access to publicly funded […]
The plenary vote to adopt the own-initiative (INI) report initiated by Axel Voss brings to a close a process that began in June 2025. While many aspects of the report improved during the committee stage and the text itself does not have immediate legal consequences, the overall outcome remains disappointing. The report is still incoherent […]
Today, we are publishing our 2025 annual report (available as a PDF file) that covers COMMUNIA’s activities between January 1, 2025 to November 30, 2025. This corresponds to the third reporting period for our structural grant from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. The 2025 reporting period marks a consolidation phase […]
The European Commission is expected to present its proposal for a European Research Area (ERA) Act later this year. In anticipation, the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) has adopted a motion for a resolution, accompanied by a set of questions to the Commission, setting out key priorities for the upcoming instrument. […]
