Works and data produced by the public sector (such as official texts of a legislative, administrative, or legal nature) are part of an essential commons of information which is too important for the functioning of our societies to be burdened with copyright restrictions even for a limited period. To ensure a consistent and harmonised scope of the Public Domain, Europe needs to ensure that these materials are free from exclusive rights in all Member States.
The argument in brief Published research outputs often end up locked behind paywalls, unavailable to many researchers and the broader public, impeding scientific – and human – progress. Despite progress in the area of open science, research funded by the European public is no exception to this. In many cases, European taxpayers are essentially asked […]
Access and use of public sector documents and political speeches are key to a thriving democracy and civil society as they ensure transparency and accountability. Furthermore, they provide society with important historical records about political decision making. Copyright and paywalls, however, can render access to these materials difficult or prohibitively expensive. Today, COMMUNIA is releasing […]
Background Public sector documents and public speeches are of key concern to the public. New legislation and court decisions lay down the rules that govern our daily lives, and provide obligations and privileges to people who need to be aware of their presence in order to act upon them. Public documents produced by the executive […]
FragDenStaat – a German transparency initiative fighting for freedom of information – has published the law gazette for executive orders and other decrees by the German government, which is currently paywalled. And the project won‘t stop there. In Germany, civil society often faces problems accessing government documents that are locked behind paywalls. Instead of making […]
