infoJustice

[Darius Whelan  and Louise Crowley, CC Ireland, Link (CC-BY)] Creative Commons Ireland has today submitted a letter to the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation concerning the EU’s new proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market as follows:

We are the Public Leads of Creative Commons Ireland and we welcome the opportunity to express our view on the EU’s new proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.

We have been involved in discussions at European level within the Creative Commons (CC) organisation about this proposed Directive.  As a result of that process, a joint letter (attached) has been written and signed by a large number of European CC affiliates.

We fully endorse the contents of the attached letter.

Some of the main points in the letter are as follows:

• The proposed ancillary copyright (“link tax”) would have a negative impact on online sharing and should be removed.
• The education exception should be broadened beyond formal educational establishments.
• The Text and Data Mining exception should be available to the private sector as well as to non-profits.
• Rather than a licensing system for use of out-of-commerce works by cultural heritage institutions, a better solution would be an exception for the use of such works.
• The proposal to require internet platforms to monitor content should be removed.
• There should be a mandatory exception regarding freedom of panorama.
• A general exception should be introduced to make copyright law more adaptable to new uses and technologies over time.

In addition, we note that many of the submissions in the CC letter attached are in keeping with proposals in Ireland’s Copyright Review Committee (CRC) report on Modernising Copyright, published in 2013.  The CRC report was a progressive report at national level and we look forward to its implementation in due course.  It would be a real pity if, at EU level, a Directive were adopted which was not as progressive as our national review committee report.

We also support the recent open letter by EU academics on the proposed Directive.  This letter is available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2850483. It focuses on the proposed action in relation to content monitoring by intermediaries in the context of the so called ‘value gap’ proposal.  The academics ask for a public and transparent discussion on the interplay between the proposed copyright directive and the Electronic Commerce Directive.

We are available to discuss any of the above points at any stage.

Yours sincerely

Darius Whelan
d.whelan@ucc.ie

Louise Crowley
l.crowley@ucc.ie