[A2k] EU Copyright Directive review.B Hugenholtz to lead

Tue Mar 21 10:04:00 2006

  EU Copyright Directive review:Bernt Hugenholtz to lead

www.downontheriver.blogspot.com
Michelle Childs
Brussels 21 March 2006

I am at the TACD conference on the politics and ideology of intellectual
property http://www.tacd.org/docs/?id=286

There have been a number of lively and thought provoking sessions. See
below for a blog on each of the sessions. There will also be an official
report on the TACD website after the event.

We have just heard from Leonardo Cervera Nava (LCN) an Administrator in
the Copyright and Knowledge- based Economy section of DG Internal Market.

He gave a helpful overview of the Commissions approach to access to
knowledge. A number of interesting points came out of this. First in
relation to the Commission's review of the Copyright Directive, due this
year. Originally it was to be a review only of implementation, but now
it will be an evaluation review of the Directive i.e an evaluation of
whether or not has it achieved its policy objectives. This is an
important change. The most recent evaluation report from DG Internal
Market, on the Database Directive, was the first evaluation of an IP
right based on evidence rather than rhetoric. It found that granting
increased rights to database owners had not achieved its policy aims of
increasing EU competitiveness against the US, in fact the reverse.

LCN confirmed that they would adopt the same approach to the evaluation
of the Copyright Directive. Initial signs are encouraging, as the terms
of the tender for the initial evaluation are broad: the study must
include a review of the contribution of copyright to knowledge economy,
the role of consumers, the way Member States have transposed exceptions
and limitations in the Directive into national legislation ( an
increasingly controversial issue as the current disputes in France over
their implementation of the Copyright Directive show .) It will also
look at technical protecion measures (TPMs) and generally any
difficulties that arise for right holders, commercial users, consumers
,scientific and academic users and libraries

The initial evaluation will be undertaken by Professor Bernt Hugenholtz
, a well known expert in this area, who has written extensively on the
Directive, including some of the problems with it.

LCN also discussed two other Commission initiatives. First the proposal
to review the Term Directive , in the face of industry pressure to
extend the term of copyright protection. DG Internal Market will provide
an impact assessment at the end of the year.

Second in relation to the proposal to create a European Digital Library
. This is being taken forward by another DG, DG Info Soc, who have
recently completed a public consultation. The primrary purpose of this
proposal, is cultural, to fight rise of the ' Americanization' of EU
culture. In reality a response to Google's plans in this area. While its
a cultural project, its clear that concerns over copyright are
increasingly dominating the debate.

DG Int Market is 'advising' DG InfoSoc. What are they saying? In short,
only move ahead with the the copyright right holders agreement, and that
there are no real problems with the law.

There are three main concerns that DG InfoSoc is looking at:

-On line access- How can EU citizens be given access to their culture on
line? DG Int Mart recommends that if the material is subject to
copyright, this material should only be used with the consent of
copyright owners. No apparent mention of the use of exceptions in the law.

-What content should be digitized?- DG Mart encourages the focus to be
on public domain materials.

- How can material be preserved and stored?. One of the issues is the
use of TPMs. DG Mrkt considers that current legislation allows for
sufficient flexibility to allow institutions to preserve such artifacts.
Most library groups are concerned that it may not.

The significance of the copyright issues is shown by the fact that first
meeting of the High Level group on digital libraries set up by DG Info
Commissioner Reding, due to take place next week, is entirely devoted to
copyright issues

It is to be hoped that the evaluation of the Copyright Directive will
also look at this issue too.

The final comments where on the proposed Broadcasting and Web casting
Treaty being discussed at WIPO. LCN caveatted his comments, that he is
not the person responsible for this issue within DG Int Mrkt. He did
confirm however that the Commission has carried out an assessment of the
proposal ( though this has not been made public)which has been discussed
with Member States . It is a very controversial issue. The EU's original
position was to be against web casting, but they are under strong
pressure from WIPO to reach agreement on this Treaty. The key block for
the EU is the need to try and find an agreement that would be acceptable
to the US. For the US web casting is a deal breaker for the Treaty.

Read On:

Blog on the TACD conference:

https://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/gerloff/blog

Details on Professor Bernt HugenholtzPo

http://www.ivir.nl/staff/hugenholtz.html

DG Internal Market page on the Database Directive evaluation.

http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/copyright/prot-databases/prot-databases_en.htm
<http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/copyright/prot-databases/prot-databases_en.htm>

DG Information Society page on the Digital Libraries Project:

http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/background/index_en.htm

Cptech page on the Braodcasting and web casting Treaty:

http://cptech.org/ip/wipo/bt/index.html
<http://cptech.org/ip/wipo/bt/index.html>

--

Michelle Childs, Head of European Affairs.
 michelle.childs@cptech.org. www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology in London, 24 Highbury Crescent, London,
N5 1RX, UK. Tel:+44(0)207 226 6663 ex 252. Mob:+44(0)790 386 4642. Fax:
+44(0)207 354 0607

Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva, 1 Route des  Morillons, CP
2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland. Tel: +41 22 791 6727

Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC PO Box 19367,
Washington, DC 20036, USA Tel.:  +1.202.387.8030, fax: +1.202.234.5176