Today, COMMUNIA is launching fivefixes.eu, a new campaign website setting out five targeted changes to EU copyright law that could deliver significant benefits for research and innovation in Europe. Policymakers must address five persistent problems that prevent Europe’s knowledge ecosystem from reaching its full potential. With the public consultation on a potential initiative for a […]
The Commission has put copyright back on the menu. This is a chance to remove longstanding issues, but will the initiative address all of them? Join COMMUNIA on Wednesday, 7 October, at 15:00 CEST for a special online salon to explore that question. We will share our first assessment of the recently opened public consultation […]
Last week, COMMUNIA joined IFLA, LIBER and SPARC Europe for a meeting with Ekaterina Zaharieva, Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, to discuss the upcoming European Research Area (ERA) Act. During this constructive exchange, we highlighted two priorities: an EU-wide secondary publication right to make publicly funded research openly available, and a general scientific research […]
Today, Centrum Cyfrowe is publishing Barriers to Research: Insights into the Patchwork of Research Exceptions in European Copyright Laws and Practical Perspectives from European Researchers, a report prepared in collaboration with the Future Law Lab at the Jagiellonian University (the PDF is available on Zenodo).1 The report examines whether the European copyright framework is keeping […]
In our capacity as accredited observers of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), we are attending the 48th session of the Committee, which is currently taking place in Geneva (18-22 May, 2026). On Tuesday, we made the following statement on Limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives/ Limitations and exceptions for […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 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. […]
