The end is in sight! After delays at (almost) every stage of the legislative process, the EU AI Act will soon be published in the EU’s official journal and eventually enter into force in August. This marks the end of more than 3 years of negotiations since the text was originally proposed by the European Commission in April of 2021. Naturally, with so much time spent on the file, the text has seen a lot of changes, many of which were inspired by technological developments happening in parallel to the institutional negotiations. Most notable in this regard is perhaps the meteoric rise of genera ..read more

Join us on October 2nd, from 1500h to 1700h, for an in-person event on why Europe needs a Digital Knowledge Act at TownHall Europe, Brussels! What to expect The European Union is spending massively on research and innovation. Horizon Europe has a budget of €95.5 billion, up from a cool €80 billion for its predecessor program, Horizon 2020. This important strategic investment has and will continue to bring about scientific breakthroughs. And yet, the EU has failed to prioritise crucial reforms allowing universities to achieve Horizon Europe’s goal, “the creation and better diffusion of exc ..read more

In Italy, the use of images of cultural heritage in the Public Domain is still subject to heated debate. This blog post provides an update on the situation, presenting a recently adopted ministerial decree, which facilitates the use of such images in scientific publications. While the decree is a step in the right direction, it is not a complete turnaround. In many parts, it still reflects an antiquated, highly bureaucratic approach that values control over Open Access. Particularly the Ministry of Culture still favours a system of prior authorisation and monetisation of reproductions of cultu ..read more

Today, COMMUNIA is releasing Policy Paper #21 on the right to license and own digital materials (also available as a PDF file), in which we highlight a crucial challenge that users face in the digital environment: the increasing inability to own digital copies of copyrighted material. Legacy physical formats, such as books, CDs and DVDs, are increasingly replaced by their digital-only counterparts. In fact, many entertainment media, such as movies and musical works, but also scientific articles and books released today are published in digital-only formats. This has opened the door for publish ..read more

EU copyright law provides rights holders with powerful tools, in the form of exclusive rights and enforcement mechanisms, that allow them to control the dissemination of essential knowledge goods. In the digital ecosystem, rights holders can exercise these formally legitimate rights to segment access and restrict who can buy and license their digital works. This creates the risk of upsetting the delicate balance of the copyright system, which needs to protect the legitimate interests of creators and the public interest in access to knowledge and information. Today, COMMUNIA and Knowledge Right ..read more

This article was first published on Kluwer Copyright Blog on June 7, 2024. Today marks the fifth anniversary of the entry into force of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. It is hard to remember how divisive and controversial the Directive was during its creation. The Directive’s most controversial provision – Article 17 – which brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets and millions of voices online to warn of the potential of upload filters to kill the Internet, seems to have faded almost completely from public view. Instead, attention has shifted to the TD ..read more

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the DSM Directive. To celebrate the occasion, we are releasing a supplement to our series of blog posts on trends in national copyright policy following the DSM implementation. The Post-DSM Copyright Report series analyses the national transpositions of all Member States that have finalised their national implementation (i.e. all but one Member State) to understand the influence of our proposals, identify areas of convergence and divergence, and assess the impact on users and the Public Domain. In previous blog posts, we discussed the nation ..read more

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 is about Open Access to the output of scientific research, namely academic publications. Our call for a Digital Knowledge Act for Europe for instance, proposes a secondary publication right, obligation and e ..read more

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 provided by libraries are vital to the enjoyment of fundamental rights. In a world where information is increasingly accessed digitally, library users expect and need access to e-books. However, libraries face significant barriers to ..read more

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 of a concession fee even if the work in question has long been out of or never been under copyright. In recent years, the Italian Ministry of Culture has ramped up the enforcement of this pseudo-copyright by taking legal proceedings against a number of comm ..read more