Publishers can easily block the new TDM exception
Today, LIBER, the Association of European Research Libraries, published results of the survey on content blocking, carried out by LIBER’s Copyright & Legal Matters Working Group and the UK Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance (LACA). The results of the survey are worrying, as they show that the Text and Data Mining (TDM) exception contained in the new Directive 2019/790 can easily be undermined by technical blocking from publishers. This information is crucial in the light of consultations for implementation of the new Directive in Slovenia, which are to be held over the course of the next two weeks.
The new Directive 2019/790 in its Article 3 provides for the exception for TDM made by research organisations and cultural heritage institutions for the purposes of scientific research. In respect of this exception, the rightsholders are not only prohibited from preventing researchers from exercising their rights under the exception, but are also required to remove any technical protection measures (TPMs) that do so.
However, Article 3 of the new Directive does not specify how quickly the TPMs have to be removed and LIBER’s survey shows that this is highly problematic. Indeed, the survey shows that in practice rightsholders are not inclined to remove TPMs, and even when the TPMs are eventually removed, this takes a lot of time and resources. Consequently, this has negative implications to individual researchers, as well as institutions that are performing TDM.
Such findings show just how important it is that a provision, providing a maximum period of 72 hours to remove TPMs, is advocated for in the process of implementing the new Directive in national legislations of EU Member States (for suggestions on how to implement such a provision, see Communia Guidelines on implementation of articles 3 and 4 of the directive).
If such provision is not adopted by Member States, the new TDM exception will, as the survey shows, exist only in theory, as the rightsholders will easily prevent TDM with TPMs.
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.