Communia’s Open Letter for protection of the users’ fundamental rights
On 20 April, Communia and 20 other users’ rights organisations published an open letter, calling upon the European Commission to maintain its commitment to the users’ fundamental rights in its anticipated guidance on the implementation of Article 17 of the DSM Directive.
The open letter is a reaction to the CJEU’s notice that the date for the Advocate General’s opinion in the case C-401/19, which regards Article 17 of DSM Directive and compliance with users’ fundamental rights, will be postponed by almost three months. This can crucially affect the highly-anticipated Commission guidance for Article 17 implementation that are supposed to include strong user rights safeguards. The latest development, however, can indicate that there are strong political pressures in the background, attempting to reduce users’ rights in the upcoming guidance.
Thus, Communia addressed the open letter to the Commission, urging it “not to weaken its guidance through open ended exception clauses that seem to benefit particular rightsholders at the expense of users’ fundamental rights” and not to diverge from its stance previously taken before the CJEU.
As the DSM Directive implementation deadline looms, it will be interesting to see which stans the Commission will take in its highly-anticipated guidance.
The Communia’s open letter in full is available here, for more information, see here.
The 4th Open Knowledge Day took place on Tuesday 17 October 2023, with an accompanying workshop on 18 October 2023. This year it was organised by the Open Data and Intellectual Property Institute (ODIPI) and supported by Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21).
We invite you to the fourth Open Knowledge Day and the workshop, which will take place this year within the framework of the programme and with the support of Knowledge Rights 21. The event will bring together experts from different European countries to discuss two topics: the first part will deal with the legal basis for data analytics, which is a key part of machine learning and related artificial intelligence, and the general exception for research. In the second part, open science in theory and practice will be presented both in Slovenia and in some Western Balkan countries. Representatives of research and educational institutions from Slovenia and the Western Balkan countries, as well as interested members of the public, are invited to attend.
Dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič, a renowned expert in copyright law, has joined the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, where she will serve as an affiliate researcher for the next two years.
On Friday, October 6, 2023, the online seminar “Practical Experiences in Resolving Copyrights of Modern Book Works” took place. The seminar addressed relevant questions concerning user access to literary works in digital form.