New article published on text and data mining proposals of Copyright Directive

 

1 May 2018

A new article by Benjamin Raue entitled “Free Flow of Data? The Friction Between the Commission’s European Data Economy Initiative and the Proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market” (available here) details shortcomings of the text and data mining proposals of the Copyright Directive. After assessing the rise of text and data mining concerns as a reaction to big data, Raue then assesses the new exceptions for data miners per the Directive (in particular, the exception for research organisations only). Raue finds that by limiting the new exception to not-for-profit research organisations, larger tech companies will likely move offshore to countries which provide exceptions for text and a data mining (e.g. US or Japan). Furthermore, they note how limitations to outputs of non-commercial scientific research may hamper e.g. investigative journalism, which may require the analysis of large amounts of leaked documents (and potentially tantamount to an infringement of article 11(2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights).