[Advocacy Advisors] leak of EU Commission copyright whitepaper

Mon Jun 23 14:51:15 UTC 2014

Hi all,

Skimmed through the document. The basic position is that they recommend
action to be taken in the 2014-2019 period, but don't want to say whether
this should legislative or other. The positions range from harmonising
exceptions (teaching, persons with disability) to basically refraining from
any binding steps (in the cases of user-generated content, e-lending).

Perhaps one good development is that the Commission sees copyright as "part
of a broader set of 'rules of the game'" for the internet, which means that
they've gotten the notion of *net politics *comprising many different
policy sectors.

As Luis pointed out, some nuances might be quite important in setting the
tone for the next years. And since this is just a draft and these little
bits can change in the final version, I would refrain from making
definitive public statements for now.

One thing I'd like to point out already, though. The Commission mentions
three objectives of a possible copyright reform and two of them contain the
word "market". As long as copyright remians an economic tool within DG
MARKT, we will need to talk about economic benefits of free knowledge in
order to be taken seriously. Talking only about cultural, democratic and
educational benefits will relegate us to the role of a second-class
stakeholder.

Dimi

2014-06-23 16:08 GMT+02:00 Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at wikimedia.de
>:

> > I haven't been able to read it all yet, but thought I'd share here -
> > interested to hear other people's take.
>
> First reactions are disappointment with this Whitepaper. I recommend
> reading this document next to the upcoming Impact Assessment (an early
> draft has been published on statewatch.org).
>
> Mathias
>
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