Monthly Archives: April 2018

Academics from 25 leading Intellectual Property research centres in Europe have published an open letter, expressing grave concerns at the legislative direction of the proposed copyright directive. After a balanced draft report by the European Parliament’s Rapporteur Therese Comodini (Comodini Report, issued on 10 March 2017 [LINK]), recent texts coming from the new Rapporteur Axel Voss [LINK] and the Bulgarian Presidency [LINK] of the Council of the European Union appear to be sliding towards a compromise that fails the aims of the Directive to improve choice, access and fairness in the digital environment. There is scientific consensus –      that the proposed exception for text-and-data-mining in Art. 3 will not achieve its goal to stimulate innovation and research if restricted to … Continue reading →

Copyright specialist and CREATe Industry Fellow Naomi Korn marks World IP Day with the launch of new Copyright Guidance for Museums & Galleries, and announces an upcoming Copyright Awareness Hour. Museums are creators and commissioners of copyright works, consumers of content created by others, and custodians of collections in which they may or may not own the rights. How they subsequently identify, clear, manage and use these rights is an operational issue with potential high resource issues. If they choose to build business models on these rights, provide access and allow reuse, the way that they incorporate those rights within long term planning will ultimately impact upon strategic objectives. In particular, how organisations achieve the appropriate balance between charging and/or … Continue reading →

A summary of this post has been published in The Conversation on 24 May 2018: http://theconversation.com/data-mining-why-the-eus-proposed-copyright-measures-get-it-wrong-96743 An extended version has been accepted for presentation at the European Policy for Intellectual Property conference (EPIP 2018), taking place in Berlin on 5-7 September 2018. 1) Introduction The Proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (the Proposal) contains a number of provisions intended to modernise EU copyright law and to make it “fit for the digital age”.[1] Some of these provisions have been object of a lively scholarly debate in the light of their controversial nature (the proposed adjustment of intermediary liability for copyright purposes contained in Art. 13, see here at p. 7) or because they propose to … Continue reading →

Registration is now open for the official launch of the OpenMinTeD platform, in Brussels on Thursday 24 May 2018. The event comprises a number of discussions throughout the day on the way forward for Text and Data Mining (TDM). If you are a publisher or repository manager, a TDM software provider or developer, researcher, SME, company, funder or government employee, feel free to register and participate in this open discussion. A full programme and booking link are available here: http://openminted.eu/openminted-invites-you-to-an-all-around-tdm-experience/ OpenMinTeD (Open Mining Infrastructure for Text and Data) is the H2020 e-infra project aiming to develop a registry for text and data mining services and tools. This will allow researchers, research institutions and data providers to find, use and combine resources for … Continue reading →

Booking is now open for the final conference of the EnDOW project. The conference will be held in Alicante, Spain, on 15th May 2018. For the full programme and the booking link, see here. EnDOW (“Enhancing access to 20th Century cultural heritage through Distributed Orphan Works clearance”) is a Heritage Plus funded project led by Professor Maurizio Borghi at Bournemouth University. The three-year study (2015-2018) brings together a diverse research team from law, sociology, cultural heritage, communication, and computer science to address the challenge of diligent search for copyright clearance in cultural heritage institutions (CHIs). The project is developing a crowdsourcing solution to diligent search for use by CHIs and other organisations. For more information about the EnDOW platform and research, … Continue reading →

Report on CREATe’s Spring Public Lecture by PhD student and Copyright Wiki Sub-Editor, Amy Thomas. As part of CREATE’s Spring 2018 Public Lecture series, Carys Craig (Associate Professor, York University, Toronto) presented her findings concerning the origins and development of the fair dealing doctrine, as well as introducing her relational theory of authors’ rights. The lecture was held on the 21st of March in the Arts and Humanities Theatre of Glasgow University, and was chaired by Thomas Margoni. Carys began her discussion by tracing the origins of the fair dealing doctrine historically. From its initial basis in the concept of equitable treatment in the 18th century, the doctrine moves to a more formalistic and exhaustive interpretation, with heavy colonial influence evident … Continue reading →

Icepops 2018 – the International Copyright-literacy Event with Playful Opportunities for Practitioners and Scholars – took place on Tuesday 3rd April at the University of Liverpool. The conference was conceived and co-chaired by Chris Morrison and Dr Jane Secker, and co-sponsored by CLA, Learning on Screen, CREATe, IPAN, EBLIDA, UK Copyright Literacy and the CILIP Information Literacy Group. The event brought together practitioners and scholars from all over the world, including the US, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Hungary. The opening keynote by Professor Ronan Deazley (Queen’s University Belfast) – titled When the Copyright Fun Stops, Stop! – highlighted the importance of educating about copyright by doing and documenting, by embedding copyright use in practice. He provided … Continue reading →