Category User Rights Network

Commission consultation on Article 17 guidance: User rights must be protected at upload

[Paul Keller] At the end of July the Commission published a long awaited “targeted consultation addressed to the participants to the stakeholder dialogue on Article 17 of the CDSM Directive“. With this consultation the Commission makes good on its (pre-covid) promise to “share initial views on the content of the Article 17 guidance” with the participants of the stakeholder dialogue. Nestled in-between 18 questions, the consultation document provides a detailed outline of what the Commission’s guidance could look like once it is finalised. While we have been rather sceptical after the end of the six meetings of the stakeholder dialogue meetings, we are pleased to see that the initial views shared by the Commission express a genuine attempt to find a balance between the protection of user rights and the interests of creators and other rightholders, which reflects the complex balance of the provisions introduced by Article 17 after a long legislative fight.

SOUTH AFRICA’S COPYRIGHT AMENDMENT BILL – 5 YEARS ON

[Denise Nicholson] ... On 16 June 2020, the President elected to refer the Bill back to Parliament on the grounds of “constitutional concerns”. What is very disappointing and surprising is that the President ignored a Senior Counsel’s Opinion on the Bill, sent to his office, as well as hundreds of submissions, letters, messages, and public presentations in favour of these exceptions throughout the legislative process. Instead, and perhaps under pressure, he sent the Bill back based purely on one submission to Parliament made by a Senior Counsel on behalf of his client, the Copyright Coalition of South Africa. He failed to give his own presidential reasons or opinion as to why issues raised were likely to be "unconstitutional”.

ON A KNIFE EDGE? SOUTH AFRICA’S NEW COPYRIGHT LAW

[EIFL] The Copyright Amendment Bill [B13B - 2017] had been sitting on the desk of President Cyril Ramaphosa for over a year waiting to be signed into law. In June 2020, when Blind South Africa issued a legal challenge over the delay, the President acted. But instead of signing the Bill that had been approved by the legislature, the President used his prerogative to return it to parliament citing constitutional concerns with certain aspects, including new exceptions for libraries, education and persons with disabilities. The President’s rejection of the Bill is widely seen as the result of pressure by copyright industries, and the threat of trade sanctions and reduced future investment from the United States and the European Union.

Survey Data from Canada, Mexico and Taiwan added to User Rights Database

In 2017, PIJIP released the User Rights Database, a novel, survey-based dataset, which measures changes to countries’ laws on copyright exceptions over time. Last spring we have added three additional countries to the dataset – Canada, Mexico and Taiwan. This post introduces the new data and discusses how it compares to the data from the original set of countries.

Regulating Technology Through Copyright Law: A Comparative Perspective

[Pamela Samuelson] The EU's recently adopted DSM Directive marks a break after 30-some years of general convergence in the way EU and US copyright laws have regulated digital technologies. Given the differences in underlying rationales for IP rights and in the legal cultures of the EU and US, the two might pursue divergent paths going forward, particularly in respect of ISP liability and press publisher rules.

New policy paper on fundamental rights as a limit to copyright during emergencies

[Teresa Nobre] Today, Communia released a policy paper on fundamental rights as a limit to copyright during emergencies. This policy paper has been prepared in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused a massive disruption of the normal organization of society in many EU countries. In our paper we defend that, in order to transpose education, research and other public interest activities from public locations to private homes during government-imposed lockdowns, we need to be able to rely on the understanding that fundamental rights can, in exceptional situations, function as an external limit to our national copyright systems.

Open letter to the EU Ambassador to South Africa on copyright laws

[Association for Progressive Communications and International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions] ... stakeholders across South Africa have being waiting for many years for the update of the country’s copyright laws. With the last reform having taken place 40 years ago, there is a pressing need to bring laws into the digital age, as well as to address the significant problems around the governance of rightholder organisations set out by the Farlam Commission. The resulting bill achieves many of these goals.

New Leadership at WIPO

[Teresa Hackett] In May 2020, member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) appointed Mr Daren Tang to WIPO’s top job in Geneva. As leader of WIPO, the global body that sets international law and policy on intellectual property issues, the new Director General takes charge of an organization whose direction on copyright determines how libraries do their work, especially in the digital environment. In this blog, Teresa Hackett, EIFL Copyright and Libraries Programme manager introduces the new Director General and sets out hopes for libraries under his leadership. EIFL has congratulated Tang on his appointment.

Implementing User Rights for Research in the Field of Artificial Intelligence: A Call for Action at the International Level

[Sean Flynn, Christophe Geiger and João Pedro Quintais] Last year, before the onset of a global pandemic highlighted the critical and urgent need for technology-enabled scientific research, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched an inquiry into issues at the intersection of intellectual property (IP) and artificial intelligence (AI). We and other members of the Global Expert Network on Copyright User Rights contributed comments to that inquiry, with a focus on the application of copyright to the use of text and data mining technology. This blog, and the article it is based on, describes some of the most salient points of our submission and concludes by stressing the need for international leadership on this important topic.

Joint Comment to WIPO on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

[Joint comment to WIPO endorsed by 16 members of the Global Expert Network on Copyright User Rights] We submit this comment in response to the World Intellectual Property Organization request in relation to its work on the impact of artificial intelligence (Al) on intellectual property (IP)... We comment here only on the copyright related questions in section 13. Some of our comments with regard to the framing of the questions and defining the differences between AI, machine learning and text and data mining may apply more broadly to the entire document.