Europeana finalises and submits response to public consultation on EU copyright rules

 

 

Following a good response from the Europeana Network, we are pleased to have finalised and  submitted our response to the public consultation on EU copyright rules. Below, you will find a summary of both the advocacy process that enabled us to finalise this document, and of the mains points that we made on your behalf.  

 

Before I do that though - we've submitted our response. Have you?  You have one week - until 5 March - left to submit your organisations’ response, or to get in touch with the association that represents your organisation to find out what they have done on your behalf, and what you can do to help. We've been a working with associations such as CENL, CERL, FEP, EMF, EUROCLIO, EURBICA and IASA and we know that they are either currently preparing their statements or they have already submitted theirs. We encourage all cultural heritage organisations to submit a response to this consultation  so that our collective voice is heard by the people that matter in Brussels. 

 

You can find a summary of our response  in the advocacy section of  pro.  The super-short summary is that  we advocate for harmonised and flexible copyright laws that broaden and unify the current limitations and exceptions, lowering the barriers of use for educational purposes, clarifying the laws on text and data mining, and last but not least, we make a case for a reduction in the term of copyright and for some kind of registration system for copyright.  

We have already written about the process of working with representatives from the Europeana Board to develop the arguments made in our response. Once we agreed on the main points with this group, called the Copyright Review Working Group, we sent the paper to the Europeana Network.  We specifically asked organisation who did not share aspects of our views to let us know, so that their dissent could be noted – you can see how this information was recorded in the full submission to the Commission.  

 

I'll be writing more about the advocacy process, and in particular why the development of this position paper  is a success, in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, please take a moment to read the summary paper, and submit your own response to the public consultation on EU copyright rules - helping us to strengthen the voice of cultural heritage organisations in this public consultation.

 

If you have any questions or wish to receive additional information on Europeana’s position regarding copyright policy, please get in touch with Julia Fallon at julia.fallon@europeana.eu or +31 70 3140964.