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 CET, on the occasion of the publication of both a new study on e-lending in Europe commissioned by Knowledge Rights 21 and a COMMUNIA policy paper on the same issue. Libraries have long played a crucial role in ensuring broad public access to knowledge and culture. Today, digital access to reliable information is mo ..read more

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 based on national heritage laws. Responding to this alarming development, COMMUNIA commissioned an independent expert opinion from researchers Giulia Dore (University of Trento) and Giulia Priora (NOVA School of Law in Lisbon). Italy ..read more

For more than seven decades, international law has consistently led countries to embrace culture as a global and cross-border value for humanity. The human right to cultural participation has become a pillar of protecting and empowering individuals and communities. At the EU level, the competence to legislate on cultural matters is mostly left to the Member States. However, the protection, enjoyment, and enhancement of Europe’s cultural heritage is far from being merely national business. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and the entire EU cultural policy agenda stand on the obligati ..read more

Earlier today, the European Parliament voted in favour of the Directive on common rules promoting the repair of goods. With this Directive, the EU aims to increase the level of consumer and environmental protection by encouraging consumers to repair defective products instead of replacing them. To that end, the proposal takes a number of important steps which include prohibiting contractual and technological practices that prevent the repair of goods and facilitating the access of professional repairers to technical documentation and spare parts. Unfortunately, the Directive fails to address o ..read more

In our capacity as accredited observers of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), we are attending the 45th session of the Committee, which is currently taking place in Geneva (April 15-19, 2024). We made the following statement regarding limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities (Agenda Item 6): Dear Delegates, Many of us here today will remind you that knowledge institutions face many challenges when it comes to fulfilling their public interest missions in the digital environment. These hurdles ra ..read more

In our capacity as accredited observers of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), we are attending the 45th session of the Committee, which is currently taking place in Geneva (April 15-19, 2024). We made the following statement regarding the protection of Broadcasting Organizations (Agenda Item 4): Dear Delegates, The proposed broadcast treaty, in its current version, remains a threat to the Public Domain and usage rights, particularly when legal protection of broadcasters is shaped in the form of exclusive rights, on top of rights that apply to content. The right ..read more

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 to pay up twice, once for funding the research and again for access to the final publication. One reason for this is the transfer of copyright ownership. To comply with contractual demands, researchers routinely outright transfer their economic exploitation rights to pu ..read more

On the 6th of March 2024, we were delighted to welcome a full house at our “Unlocking Knowledge Conference” at Town Hall Europe. At this event, we asked academics, civil society representatives and EU policymakers about the issues knowledge institutions and researchers still face when accessing and using copyrighted materials in their activities, particularly in their digital activities. COMMUNIA defends that the introduction of a targeted legislative instrument, a Digital Knowledge Act for Europe, covering the needs of knowledge institutions in the digital environment, would be the way forwar ..read more

The purpose of copyright, at its very basic level, finds its normative implementation in the interplay between access to protected works and the protection of the moral and material interest of creators (see Geiger, 2017). The social contract of copyright, which main purpose is to realize a broader collective concern, the access of citizens to science and culture (Geiger, 2013), lies in the approximation of the interests of rightholders and users. Unfortunately, this perspective has been long overshadowed in the EU by a traditional understanding of copyright as a system that grants exclusive ..read more

A fair and modern copyright framework is essential for an enabling European research environment. However, researchers often find that their access, use and reuse of resources essential to their activities is still limited by copyright and related rights. While, thanks to the 2019 DSM directive, they now benefit from a EU wide text and data mining exception, the exception only covers acts of copying for a specific subset of research activities. The right of communication to the public, which is necessary for cross border or remote access to share resources and research results for the purpose ..read more