Green Paper “Copyright in the Knowledge Economy”
A green paper titled “Copyright in the Knowledge Economy” was published on July 16, 2008 by the European Commission, re-opening the discussion on the effects of IPR legislation on science and education. It can be downloaded in English, French or German from the following URLs:
The replies to the paper are collected at this page.
As a next step the Comission compiled a short communication from the received replies concerning various aspects of the green paper. It once more stresses the opposing positions of the publishing and rightsholders sector on one side and universities and other education and research institutions, libraries and cultural heritage organisations on the other.
A number of tasks were identified as the next steps to be tackled in the ongoing IPR legislation process:
- Building a legal framework for copyright aspects of large scale library digitisation efforts and the dissemination of the digitised works. This will include discussion on the transaction costs for rights clearance. Possible options range from collective licensing systems to a statutory exception.
- Establishing standards for due diligence in rights clearance for orphan works. A separate impact assessment on this issue will be held.
- Concrete action in relation to open access to publicly funded research will continue as appropriate
- A stakeholders consultation on the improvement of university libraries' usage rights licensing schemes for scientific journals will be held
Furthermore, a public hearing on orphan works was held on October 26, 2009.
To understand the European copyright policy the following studies by the Institute for Information Law (IViR) of the University of Amsterdam, a leading research institute in the field of European copyright law, are very helpful:
Conceiving an international instrument on limitations and exceptions to copyright – final report
March 06, 2008
by Bernt Hugenholtz & Ruth L. OkedijiThe Recasting of Copyright & Related Rights for the Knowledge Economy – final report
November 2006
The Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 22 May on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society which will be updated by the Green Paper can be found here for many EU languages:
