The Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information wants to make research data infrastructure more transparent

On April 16th 2024, 40 organisations signed the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information with the aim of preserving academic independence. The declaration calls on research institutions to unite around shared principles for open research information and a commitment to developing open research data infrastructure. Most of the conversation about Open Science in academic publishing […]

Today, COMMUNIA is releasing Policy Paper #19 on e-lending (also available as a PDF file), in which we address the shortcomings of the current European legal framework, and present our recommendations for an EU-wide right to e-lend. Libraries play a long-standing part in connecting European citizens to, and enabling their use of, information resources.The services […]

On Tuesday, June 18th, 15:00-16:00 CEST, we invite you to an online salon on the alarming development of the hollowing of the Public Domain through cultural heritage laws with a focus on Italy. Under the Italian cultural heritage code, many uses of cultural heritage held in Italian collections are contingent on authorisation and the payment […]

The Italian Ministry of Culture has taken legal proceedings in Italy against a number of commercial uses of Public Domain works held in Italian collections. Defendants included GQ Italia (for using Michelangelo’s David on a magazine cover), Jean Paul Gaultier (for using Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus in a clothing collection) and, of particular interest […]

Today, we are launching our brand new monthly newsletter. We are aiming for a clear and easily digestible overview of our work as well as recent developments in our field of interest for policymakers, civil society partners and anyone with an interest in the Public Domain. For now, we intend to release a newsletter on […]

This is the final blog post in our series on trends in national copyright policy following the DSM implementation. With the national processes finalised in all but one Member State, we have analysed the transpositions to understand the impact of our proposals, identify areas of convergence and divergence, and assess how those affect the position […]

Today, we are publishing our 2022-2023 annual report that covers COMMUNIA’s activities between July 1, 2022 to December 31, 2023. This corresponds to the first reporting period for our structural grant from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. During this roll-out stage, we have restructured the organisation in a way to […]

Today, COMMUNIA is releasing Policy Paper #18 on limitation of liability for knowledge institutions (also available as a PDF file), in which we propose to lay down at Union level that knowledge institutions shall be sheltered from liability so long as they act in a responsible and prudent way, having reasonable grounds to believe that they have acted […]

Due to the lack of a clear legal framework for e-lending at both the EU and member state level, libraries are struggling to fulfil their public service mission in the digital environment. We are hosting the first COMMUNIA Salon of this year, online on Wednesday, May 29, 15:00-16:00 CEST, on the occasion of the publication […]

Recent Italian courts cases concerning the reproduction of works held by Italian cultural heritage institutions ignore Article 14 of the CDSM Directive. Instead of following the intent of the directive to ensure that faithful reproductions of public domain works remain in the public domain, the Italian lawmaker extends new exclusive rights over public domain works […]