Freedom of panorama is a fundamental element of European cultural heritage and visual history. Rooted in freedom of expression, it allows painters, photographers, filmmakers, journalists and tourists alike to document public spaces, create masterpieces of art and memories of beautiful places, and freely share it with others. Within the Best Case Scenarios for Copyright series […]
The copyright was originally meant to promote creativity and innovation, but instead it’s become outdated, overly complicated, and even threatening to some users. Fortunately there are still ways to fix copyright and the EU is in a unique position to do it. The European Commission should look into best examples of national-level solutions and apply […]
Yesterday the European Commission unveiled five more elements of its Digital Single Market Strategy. These consist of new e-commerce rules (including a legislative proposal to address unjustified geoblocking), updates to the EU audiovisual rules and ‘a targeted approach to online platforms‘. From the copyright perspective the geoblocking proposal and the communication on online platforms are […]
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 […]
The Commission’s public consultation on the role of publishers in the copyright value chain and on the ‘panorama exception’ is addressed at a broad range of stakeholders, which includes both ‘Libraries/Cultural heritage institutions’ and ‘Educational or research institutions’. In this second post of our series on the consultation, we highlight what the introduction of an […]
The Commission is currently holding a public consultation on the role of publishers in the copyright value chain and on the ‘panorama exception’. Today we’re kicking off a short series of blog posts that will highlight the problematic nature of granting new copyrights for publishers, and why full freedom of panorama should be ensured for […]
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 […]
We spend a lot of effort pointing out that additional copyright, like rights for specific groups of rights holders, are a problematic concept that has potential to cause a lot of damage to the Public Domain. Most of our coverage has focused on efforts to establish an ancillary copyright for press publishers. We have seen […]
The European Commission is currently holding a consultation on the 2004 directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the online environment (the so called IPRED directive). As the name suggests, this directive deals with the enforcement of copyright – including issues such as injunctions against internet service providers, internet blocking, and warning letters […]
Recently, everybody has been busy discussing the question of whether the Diary of Anne Frank will enter (or by now, has entered) the public domain on January 1st this year (Answer: It’s complicated). Surprisingly, the discussions surrounding the copyright in Anne Frank’s writings may shed some light on another contentious copyright policy issue: text and […]
