Copyright 4 Innovation

8 September, 2014 – Buitenhof, The Hague

Copyright 4 Creativity (C4C) and Kennisland organised the Copyright 4 Innovation debate on 8 September in The Hague to exchange views between stakeholders and policy-makers on how the Netherlands can take a lead in making copyright fit for the digital age. This event was organised in light the copyright debate in the Second Chamber, that took place early November.

Presentations

Programme

Keynote Speaker

Dr Eoin O’Dell (Chair, Irish Copyright Review Committee & Associate Professor of Law, Trinity College Dublin – TCD)

Dr Eoin O’Dell is an Associate Professor of Law in Trinity College Dublin. He researches and publishes primarily in the fields of freedom of expression, and private and commercial law (including IP, IT and cyberlaw). He has been been President of the Irish Association of Law Teachers, a Member of the Council and Executive of the Society of Legal Scholars in the UK and Ireland, and Editor of the Dublin University Law Journal; and he is the Chair of the Fellows of Trinity College Dublin. He was a member of the group which advised the Department of Justice on the Defamation Act, 2009; he was a member of the Advisory Group on a European Civil Code which advised the EU Commission on common principles of European private law; and he is a member of the Statute Law Revision Committee advising the Department of Public Service and Reform on the process of revising the Irish Statute Book. He was Chair of the Copyright Review Committee which recently presented its final report to the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.

Speakers

Balázs Bodó  (Researcher & Marie Curie Felllow, Institute for Information Law – IViR, University of Amsterdam – UvA)
	Dr Balázs Bodó is since 2013 Researcher and Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). He was a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society in 2006/7 and a Fellow at the Center between 2006 and 2012. Since 2012 he has been a Fulbright Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Before moving to the Netherlands, he was deeply involved in the development of the Hungarian internet culture. He was the project lead for Creative Commons Hungary. He is a member of the National Copyright Expert Group. As an assistant professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, he helped to established and led the university’s Masters Program in Cultural Industries. He has advised several public and private institutions on digital archives, content distribution, online communities, business development. His academic interests include copyright and economics, piracy, media regulation, peer-to-peer communities, underground libraries, digital archives, informal media economies. His most recent book is on the role of P2P piracy in the Hungarian cultural ecosystem. He co-authored, together with Dr Vallbé and Dr Christian Handke, a paper on the value of online licenses for recorded music – discussing alternative compensation systems for recorded music. This paper was written in the framework of the ‘Copyright in an Age of Access: Alternatives to Copyright Enforcement’ project, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
Denis Doeland (22tracks.com)
	Denis Doeland started his career in the music (dance) industry. Back in 1993 he owned record shop ‘Bad Vibes’. This was actually the place from where the Dutch entertainment and media company ID&T (known from events like Thunderdome, Sensation, Mysteryland, Tomorrowland & Tomorrowworld) initiated their activities. Denis joined ID&T, and has been with them until 2011. Early 2002, Denis founded his own consultancy company, DDMCA (Denis Doeland Management Consultancy en Advies). DDMCA assists brands, companies and organisations to apply internet and social business to meet the new expectations of fans, clients, staff members and other involved parties. With clients like Dance Therapy, Armada Music, Extended Music, Eurosport, B2S, Amsterdam Dance Event and JunkieXL Denis can already been seen as the expert in the field of leveraging social media and data management within companies.
Dr Sergey Filippov (Associate Director, The Lisbon Council)
	Dr Sergey Filippov is Associate Director at The Lisbon Council, a leading Brussels-based innovation think-tank. He oversees several initiatives such as the European Digital Forum, liaises with policy makers, businesses and civil society, and conducts actionable policy-oriented research. Prior to joining the Lisbon Council, Dr Filippov served as Assistant Professor of Innovation Management at Delft University of Technology. He successfully completed a doctoral programme in Economics and Policy Studies of Technical Change at UNU-MERIT; and holds a Master’s degree in Management of the European Metropolitan Region from Erasmus University Rotterdam and an Executive Master’s degree in International and European Relations & Management from University of Amsterdam. He has published over 30 international refereed articles, book chapters, practitioner and policy-oriented reports, and presented his research findings at a variety of academic, practitioner and policy conferences, seminars and workshops worldwide. His most recent publication is on ‘mapping text and data mining in academic and research communities in Europe’.
Dr Lucie Guibault (Senior Researcher, Institute for Information Law – IViR, University of Amsterdam – UvA)
	Dr Lucie Guibault is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She studied law at the Université de Montréal (Canada) and received in 2002 her doctorate from the University of Amsterdam, where she defended her thesis on Copyright Limitations and Contracts: An Analysis of the Contractual Overridability of Limitations on Copyright. She joined the Institute for Information Law in 1997 and is specialized in international and comparative copyright law. Her main areas of research concern limitations and exceptions on copyright, the intersection between copyright and contracts, author’s contract law, collective rights management, and open content/open access licensing. She was part of the expert team that authored the Report on standardisation in the area of innovation and technological development notably in the field of text and data mining for the Directorate General Research and Innovation of the European Commission. She is also member of the international editorial board of the French Canadian law review Les Cahiers de propriété intellectuelle, co-editor of the Kluwer EU IP cases service and Kluwer copyright blog, member of the editorial board of Journal of Intellectual Property and Information Technology (JIPITEC) and correspondent for the Netherlands for the two law reviews Computer Law Review International (CRi).
Laurens van Hoorn (Tom Kabinet)
	Laurens van Hoorn is one of Tom Kabinet’s co-founders, he benefits from broad experience in the IT, Retail and Consultancy industries. Over the last 20 years Laurens van Hoorn has founded 6 successful start-ups, completed numerous turn-arounds and advised many Fortune 500 companies on strategy and execution. Building high-performance teams is, in his opinion, the most effective way to grow a business and succeed.
Marc Jellema (Tom Kabinet)
	Marc Jellema is a partner in The Change Network and co-founder of Tom Kabinet. Marc just recently initiated a new phenomenon: 2nd-hand ebooks. Translating difficult things into simple solutions and realizing the right change along the road is Marc Jellema’s key competence. Over the last 20 years, companies like Apple, LG and Samsung have repeatedly partnered with Marc to find solutions using models based on his business experience and econometric degree.
Paul Keller (Copyright Policy Advisor & Vice Chair, Kennisland – KL)
	Paul Keller is Copyright Policy Advisor and Vice-Chair of Kennisland, an Amsterdam based think-tank focussed on innovation in the knowledge economy. Paul is an expert on open content and data licensing with a special focus on the cultural heritage organizations, the music industry and the creative industries. He is public project lead for Creative Commons in the Netherlands and a member of the board of Creative Commons. Paul is also coordinating the copyright related aspects of Images for the Future, one of the biggest digitization projects for audio-visual heritage in Europe and he is one of the the architects of the open data policy of Europeana, the European Union funded online aggregator of Europe’s cultural heritage.
Floris Kreiken (Researcher, Bits of Freedom – BoF)
	Floris Kreiken is a Researcher at Bits of Freedom (BoF), an NGO specialized in human rights online. BoF does research, advocacy, and provides information on the relationship between the Internet and fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of information and privacy. Floris focusses on data protection, net neutrality, and copyright. Before this he was a PhD candidate at Delft University of Technology. His PHD research focused on copyright enforcement online, and its influence on human rights. During his PHD he also wrote articles on framing, taught (European) law, and spent 3 months as a Google policy fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in San Francisco.
Dr Joan-Josep Vallbé (Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute for Information Law – IViR, University of Amsterdam – UvA)
	Dr Joan-Josep Vallbé is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). He is also affiliated with the University of Barcelona. Joan-Josep is a political scientist. He works with social and computer scientists, urban designers, and legal professionals, on how to model, measure, and analyze the interaction between citizens and variation in their environment. Change may occur in micro-level contexts such as problem spaces in choice situations or in macro-level phenomena such as metropolitan growth or the regulatory environment. He co-authored, together with Dr Bodó and Dr Christian Handke, a paper on the value of online licenses for recorded music – discussing alternative compensation systems for recorded music. This paper was written in the framework of the ‘Copyright in an Age of Access: Alternatives to Copyright Enforcement’ project, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
Prof Dirk Visser (Vereniging van Openbare Bibliotheken – VOB)
	Prof Dirk Visser graduated from Leiden University in 1992 where he subsequently lectured and researched, obtaining his Ph.D. with a highly acclaimed dissertation on copyright in the digital environment in 1997. Dirk was appointed to the post of full Professor of intellectual property law at Leiden University in 2003. He is the author of numerous scientific as well as popular books and articles on intellectual property. Dirk was admitted to the bar and joined the Stibbe firm in 1996, where he worked until he became a partner with Klos Morel Vos & Schaap in 2004. He quickly gained a reputation as a highly effective litigator in the field of intellectual property handling a number of groundbreaking cases involving trademark, copyright, internet and technology related issues. Dirk is renowned for his direct approach, keen eye for strategical issues and flamboyant style. Dirk was singled out by Chambers guide to the world’s leading lawyers as an authority on copyright and trade marks. His clients include a considerable number of major brand owners, leading publishing houses and television production companies as well as interest groups such as the Dutch Newspaper association, the Dutch anti-piracy association and the Dutch Library association (VOB). He will discuss, on behalf of the VOB, the court case between the Dutch Library association and the Stichting Leenrecht on e-lending, wherein the court is expected to give its judgment on 3 September.

Moderator

Erwin Blom (Co-owner, The Crowds)
	Erwin Blom is co-owner of The Crowds, a company specialising in new media. Before The Crowds, Blom was head of the New Media and Innovation department of Dutch broadcasting organization VPRO.

On 20 March, the International Federation of Library Associations & Institutions (IFLA) and Copyright 4 Creativity (C4C) organise a breakfast debate (08.00-09.30) to discuss whether the existing international and EU copyright framework strike the right balance between access to information, research and innovation, and the need to protect creators. This event is kindly co-hosted by MEPs Amelia Andersdotter (Swedish, Greens/EFA) and Marietje Schaake (Dutch, ALDE). The event takes place in the private salon of the European Parliament in Brussels.

This debate is very timely, as European Commissioner Michel Barnier announced early February that he will issue a Whitepaper on the EU copyright reform by June 2014. Simultaneously, copyright exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives are high on the agenda of the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright & Related Rights (SCCR). The debate at WIPO focusses on the need for mandatory international standards to safeguard access to information through libraries and archives in the public interest.

Please find a summary of the event below, and a summary by IFLA here.

Program (08.30-09.30)

Hosts

Amelia Andersdotter (MEP, Greens/EFA)
	Amelia Andersdotter is a Member of the European Parliament. As part of the Greens/EFA political group she is a member of the Committee on Industry, Energy and Research. An expert on copyright, Amelia is a highly sought after international speaker and thought leader on topics pertaining to IT-policy and intellectúal property. She has been named one of the worlds ten most important internet activists for the year 2012.
Marietje Schaake (MEP, ALDE)
	Marietje Schaake is a Member of the European Parliament for the Dutch D66 within the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) political group. She serves on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, where she focuses on neighbourhood policy, human rights and internet freedom. In the Committee on Culture, Media, Education, Youth and Sports she works on Europe’s Digital Agenda and the role of culture and new media. In the Committee on International Trade she focuses on intellectual property rights, the free flow of information and the relation between trade and foreign affairs.

Speakers’ Bios

Kerstin Jorna (Director Intellectual Property Directorate, European Commission, DG MARKT – EC)
	Kerstin Jorna is Director of the Intellectual Property Directorate of the Directorate-General Internal Market and Services at the European Commission. She is a German national. She joined the Commission in 1990 as a civil servant. During the last 20 years Kerstin held various positions in the internal market directorate, amongst others as assistant of the director general as well as in the secretariat general as member of the negotiating team for the Nice treaty. After a stint as commission spokeswoman for regional policy and institutional affairs, Kerstin joined successively the cabinets of Michel Barnier, Günther Verheugen and Jacques Barrot. Kerstin studied law in Bonn, Hamburg and Bruges.
Ellen Broad (Manager Digital Projects & Policy, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions – IFLA)
	Ellen Broad is Manager Digital Projects and Policy at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). Previously, Ellen worked on copyright and access to information advocacy in Australia as Executive Officer of the Australian Digital Alliance, and as copyright law and policy adviser for the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee, promoting flexible copyright laws for the Australian IT sector, schools and universities, libraries and archives and consumers.
Susan Reilly (Projects Manager, Association of European Research Libraries – LIBER)
	Susan Reilly is Projects Manager at the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER). Susan works across a range of European projects related to open access, digitisation, digital preservation and research data management.
Vincent Bonnet (Director, European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations – EBLIDA)
	Vincent Bonnet is Director of the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA) since 2010, combining his passion for libraries with his interest in European affairs, copyright and access to information. Before starting work with EBLIDA he worked in France both as a trainer for a private company that serves libraries and as a civil servant in public libraries.
Moderator: Stuart Hamilton (Deputy Secretary General & Director of Policy and Advocacy, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions – IFLA)
	Dr. Stuart Hamilton is the Deputy Secretary General and Director of Policy and Advocacy at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) . He gained his PhD in Library and Information Science from the Royal School of Library and Information Science in Copenhagen, Denmark where his research examined freedom of access to information on the Internet worldwide, and the ways in which libraries can overcome barriers such as censorship or the digital divide to ensure that library users receive the best possible access to online information resources. He has lectured extensively around the world on his PhD subject and other intellectual freedom matters, walked 5000 miles across the United States in search of what Americans really think about Europeans, and published his findings in print and online.

On 12 November, Copyright 4 Creativity (C4) organised, with the support of Centrum Cyfrowe Projekt: Polska and the Modern Poland Foundation (Fundacja Nowoczesna Polska),  an event on text and data mining (TDM) in order to have the conversation that the European Commission’s Licences for Europe (L4E) did not allow us to undertake. Organised in the European Parliament. The event was co-hosted by Members of the European Parliament of different political groups, including Pawel Zalewski (Polish, EPP), Marietje Schaake (Dutch, ALDE) and Amelia Andersdotter (Swedish, Greens/EFA), and looked at the changes required to ensure the copyright framework in the European Union becomes fit-for-purpose for the digital society we live in.

Our hosting MEPs and other MEPs co-signed a letter to President Barroso on the need to reform the Information Society (‘InfoSoc’) Directive (2001/29/EC) in December 2012. The Commission responded with the launch of the ‘Licences for Europe’ initiative, which concluded on 13 November. Now, almost one year later, this event aimed to look back at what happened and how to move forward. In doing so, it brought together a broad range of stakeholders: MEPs from across the political spectrum, NGOs, industry representatives, and policy experts. The two panel session were moderated by Ms Eleonora Rosati of the University of Cambridge, who’s also a regular contributor to the 1709 and IPKat blogs.

The event’s programme can be found here.

Presentations

• Anne Bergman-Tahon – Presentation (PDF)
• Brian Hole – Presentation (available soon)
• Paul Keller – Presentation (PDF)
• John McNaught – Presentation (PDF)
• Niluka Satharasinghe – Presentation (PDF)
• Mathias Schindler – Presentation (PDF)
• Martin Senftleben – Presentation (PDF)

Hosts

Amelia Andersdotter (MEP, Greens/EFA)
	Amelia Andersdotter is a Member of the European Parliament. As part of the Greens/EFA political group she is a member of the Committee on Industry, Energy and Research. An expert on copyright, Amelia is a highly sought after international speaker and thought leader on topics pertaining to IT-policy and intellectúal property. She has been named one of the worlds ten most important internet activists for the year 2012.
Marietje Schaake (MEP, ALDE)
	Marietje Schaake is a Member of the European Parliament for the Dutch D66 within the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) political group. She serves on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, where she focuses on neighbourhood policy, human rights and internet freedom. In the Committee on Culture, Media, Education, Youth and Sports she works on Europe’s Digital Agenda and the role of culture and new media. In the Committee on  International Trade she focuses on intellectual property rights, the free flow of information and the relation between trade and foreign affairs.
Paweł Zalewski (MEP, EPP)
	Paweł Zalewski is a Member of European Parliament with the European Peoples Party where he is a Vice-Chairman of the Committee on International Trade. After the Polish protests on ACTA he was appointed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk to defend the Polish position on the issue. Since then he has cooperated closely with Centrum Cyfrowe and Modern Poland Foundation on drafting proposals on reforming copyright at the EU level as the current regulations do not match the reality of the twenty first century.

Speakers’ Bios

Anne Bergman-Tahon (Director, Federation of European Publishers – FEP)
	Anne Bergman-Tahon is the Director of the Federation of European Publishers. A Belgian national, she did her Master in Medieval History from the Free University of Brussels and acquired postgraduate diplomas from King’s College London on copyright and related rights as well as the Free University of Brussels on copyright. She has been working for the Federation of European Publishers for almost 20 years as a copyright advisor and a deputy Director. Since 2004 she is the Director of the FEP. She is also a member of the ALAI (Belgian section)
Brian Hole (Founder & CEO, Ubiquity Press)
	Brian Hole is the founder and CEO of Ubiquity Press, a researcher-led, fully open access publisher based in London. In addition to the usual academic publications, Ubiquity Press has a particular focus on making research data and software openly available.
Paul Keller (Vice-Chair, Kennisland)
	Paul Keller is copyright policy advisor and vice-chair of Kennisland, an Amsterdam based think-tank focused on innovation in the knowledge economy. Paul is an expert on open content and data licensing with a special focus on cultural heritage organizations and the creative industries. He is public project lead for Creative Commons in the Netherlands and serves as Collecting Societies Liaison for Creative Commons International, where he has been instrumental in negotiating cooperations between Creative Commons and various collective rights management organisations. Paul is also coordinating the copyright related aspects of Images for the Future, one of the biggest digitization projects for audio-visual heritage in Europe and is one of the the architects of the copyright licensing framework for Europeana.
Jarosław Lipszyc (President, Modern Poland Foundation)
	Jarosław Lipszyc is the chairman of the Modern Poland Foundation – an organization that is running several projects defining frameworks for educative courses under Free licences. He was the initiator of the Opened list against the introduction of software patents and Opened list against DRM. In 2006-2009 he was a member of the Indeks 73 group. In 2012 he actively participated against the introduction of ACTA in Poland.
John McNaught (Deputy Director, UK National Center for Text Mining – NaCTeM)
	John McNaught is Deputy Director of the National Centre for Text Mining, NaCTeM, hosted by the University of Manchester. He has worked in the field of Natural Language Processing since 1979 with a continuing interest in development of resources such as text corpora and computational lexicons to support language technology. At NaCTeM, John is involved in developing text mining tools and services for researchers and professionals from a range of domains, from libraries to the publishing sector.
Wilfried Rütten (Director, European Journalism Centre – EJC)
	Wilfried Rütten is Director of the European Journalism Centre. He has worked in German public and private broadcasting as a reporter and producer (ARD, RTL-Group) as well as in journalism education. Before joining the EJC he was the head of school for digital television at the University of Applied Sciences in Salzburg, Austria.
Niluka Satharasinghe (CTO & Co-Founder Sparrho.com)
	Nilu is the CTO and co-founder of Sparrho.com, the intelligent discovery platform for scientific information. He oversees the technical strategy and management of the company, and is dedicated to building a team of top-notch engineers. Nilu read machine learning at Oxford University and is the co-founder of two former startups.
Mathias Schindler (Project Manager, Wikimedia Germany)
	Mathias Schindler is a Project Manager at Wikimedia Germany. An expert on copyright and open access he is a prolific writer for Wikipedia as well as for Netzpolitik.org. Schindler is one of the founding members of Wikimedia Germany, the major European chapter of the foundation which governs Wikipedia, the greatest encyclopedia in the world.
Martin Senftleben (Professor, VU University Amsterdam)
	Martin Senftleben is Professor of Intellectual Property and Head of the Private Law Department at the VU University Amsterdam, and Senior Consultant at Bird & Bird. His activities focus on the reconciliation of private intellectual property rights with competing public interests of a social, cultural or economic nature. Current research topics concern flexible fair use copyright limitations, the enforcement of copyright in the digital environment, trademark law and the preservation of the public domain, and the liability of online platforms for the infringement of intellectual property rights.
Alek Tarkowski (Director, Centrum Cyfrowe Projekt: Polska)
	Alek Tarkowski (born 1977) is a Polish sociologist, director of Centrum Cyfrowe Projekt: Polska and Public Lead of Creative Commons Poland. In 2008-2011 he was a member of the Board of Strategic Advisors to the Prime Minister of Poland. He serves as policy advisor to Creative Commons on open content policies in Europe.
Moderator: Eleonora Rosati (Research Associate, University of Cambrigde)
	Currently a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, Eleonora Rosati is an Italian-qualified lawyer with a few years’ experience in the field of IP having worked, among other things, in the IP departments of Bird&Bird LLP in Milan and London. A law graduate from the University of Florence, Eleonora holds an LLM from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in EU copyright law from the European University Institute, Florence. She has written extensively in the field of copyright and is Deputy Editor of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice. Eleonora is also a regular contributor to highly reputed The 1709 Blog and IPKat weblogs.

LIBER organised a workshop, with the support of C4C, on the future potential and challenges of Text and Data Mining (TDM) at the British Library in London. The Workshop looked at the potential of TDM to support European research and industrial activity/new startup companies. A list of distinguished speakers made a convincing case for TDM. As one speaker said, the Web is useless without it. Check the event summary on the LIBER website, and Peter Murray-Rust’s blog post.

The meeting started with a short introduction by Jaroslaw Lipszyc, President of Nowoczesna Polska, setting out how copyright has been shifting in an unintended direction over the past decades, before leaving the stage to the various panelists, with Alek Tarkowski, Director of Centrum Cyfrowe Projekt Polska, acting as moderator.

Hanna Wróblewska welcomed the audience in the wonderful setting of her Zacheta Gallery, pointing out that an art gallery is the place where creators and users meet, and that any debate around copyright should not ignore the fact that both are important.

Caroline De Cock, Coordinator for C4C (C4C) then briefly presented the C4C Coalition, highlighting some of its past, present and future challenges and the key principles of its Declaration.

Analysing the available flexibility in interpreting and implementing copyright rules

Professor Bernt Hugenholtz, from the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam (IViR), then took the floor to present ‘Flexible Copyright‘, or how the limitations and exemptions comprised in the 2001 Information Society Directive can be read in light of digital developments. Professor Hugenholtz pointed out that there’s copyright reform in the air in the EU, giving an overview of the various countries where discussions had been ongoing for some time (e.g. UK since 2006, the Netherlands, Ireland). The technological pace of change today is such that legislators cannot reasonably be expected to predicted what the future holds, which implies and increasing need for flexible, open and abstract norms. This need is amplified by the length of the legislative cycle due to the double layer of EU and national levels.

In his presentation, Professor Hugenholtz sets out a number of non-exhaustive areas where a flexible fit for purpose interpretation of copyright rules was is required, namely:

1 . User Generated Content : looking at the concrete example of remixing and spoofs, he explained how courts, notably in the Netherlands, struggled at defining if they fell under under either parody or the quotation exceptions. At wit’s end, a Dutch court ended up going outside the realm of copyright to rather look at freedom of expression.

2. Information location tools (search): there again, a certain number of existing exceptions may or may not apply, e.g. the transient copying exception when looking at caching or the quotation exception when looking at search results (especially image search – cf. Copiepresse v. Google in Belgium)

3. Digital classroom: as tools such as ppt, blackboard and e-boards become mainstream, it is worth noting that they are not always covered by educational exceptions.

4. Documentary film making: the inclusion of old films can be an issue due to either licensing or orphan works regimes, especially as documentaries are generally not covered by either the exceptions regarding media reporting nor those related to current event/news.

5. The ‘Unknown unknowns’: how will exceptions apply in the future. Looking at an example from 5 years ago, Shazam: you need to copy music to your smartphone or tablet for the Shazam application to identify it, yet one can wonder if that is allowed.

Having framed the need for more flexibility, Professor Hugenholtz then proceeded to analyse if the EU framework allows such flexibility in the implementation and interpretation of its norm. At first glance, the answers seems ‘No’, due to the fact that the Limitations and exceptions list is an exhaustive closed list, as stipulated under Recital 32. But on the other hand, the list is written loosely and in an open way and Recital 2 explicitely refers to a flexible approach, whereby the list should be seen as an enumeration of prototypes rather than precise exceptions. Flexibility can be read in the use of ‘such as’ in Art 5 (3) (d) of the Information Society Directive (which led to very divergent interpretation in Sweden -broad interpretation- and France – narrow and conservative). Expressions such as ‘incidental inclusion’ in Art 5 (3) (i) could be applied to User Generated Content whilst concepts such as ‘pastiche’ (art 5 (3) (k)) have no clear legal definition.

Professor Hugenholtz hence concluded that there is room if you look for it. But what kind of flexibilities could be achieved?

1. A general open norm such as fair use seems unrealistic but is not impossible even under the existing rules.

2. Flexibility can be created inside the circumscribed limitations and exemptions. This is notably the Dutch approach, which consists in stretching quotation right (art 15 Dutch Copyright Act)

3. Flexibility can also be created alongside circumscribed limitations and exemptions (e.g. see Wittem European Copyright Code art 5.5).

 The point of view of publishers

Marzena Wojciechowska, lawyer at the Press Publishers Chamber, set out a quite different picture. For her, the debate about flexibility stems from the tension between the  creative creator and the creative user, between copyright and freedom of speech. Those rights are important and the compromise should be balanced. In a multi-stakeholder dialogue started last year, a few months were spent discussing how to find a solution combining these different interests. No concrete result has been achieved as no one is sure how to change the law and no one is happy, neither creators nor users. Ms Wojciechowska ironically wondered if, maybe when no none is happy that means there’s a balance?

She also pointed out that she considered that there is a need for a specialised IP copyright court, that can understand  the different rights at stake an that, in her view, the Polish implementation of the Copyright Directive is too imprecise – making no distinction between analogue and digital content. Classical copyright was based on hard copy and about a created item and how it was disseminated. In a digital world, the reality has shifted: How to define a copy? Should we talk about ‘Hard digital copy’?

Ms Wojciechowska also admitted that grasping the impact of the Internet for publishers was still difficult. For example, it is still difficult to understand who is benefiting from works on the Internet, notably when taking into consideration g advertising.

Ms Wojciechowska also expressed her support to the Licence4Europe process, considering that it demonstrates that the European Commission shares the analysis and conclusions of Polish publishers.

She finally concluded by pointing out that creation means money. Whilst the Internet is good as it allows creators to show their work, the money they make has to come from every copy sold.

Copyright implementation: a monster consuming its own child?

Michal Kwiatkowski, composer and musician, then took the floor to share his practical experience, as a creator, with copyright. He had met his music band and publisher yesterday to discuss album plans and the publisher said the plan was easy: just write two hits and we’re fine. Of course, there is no recipe for a hit. Creativity is mysterious and difficult to define, certainly in legal terms. Not to mention regulating it in a fair way. Moreover, mosts artists do not know anything about copyright, nor do they truly care.

Mr Kwiatkowski did not agree however with Jaroslaw Lipszyc who stated that the history of copyright was a history of depriving users of rights.The origin of copyright is actually to be found in the UK, where publishers were copying creations without paying the creators and UK lawmakers dealt with this problem by ensuring creators were remunerated.

The problem is that the copyright monster is now consuming it’s own child. Publishers very often exploit artists and copyright is complex, sometimes leading to absurd results. A good illustration of this absurdity is the ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, written by The Verve taking fragments from the Rolling Stones, but for which Jagger and Richards were attributed authorship of the song, even though they had not worked on it at all. When such situation occur, something is very very wrong.

For Mr Kwiatkowski, wen looking at where his works appear, he makes a difference between commercial and non-commercial use: if a pastor asks to show one of his films in his church for free, he does not consider that any payment should occur to him. However if one of his works appears on a portal that makes money out of it either through a paywall or advertising, then not paying the author is unfair.

Publishers are the biggest enemies of fair use because they fear their role will diminish. This is wrong because artists need publishers. Even if production is less important in the future as it becomes fully digital, publishers will still have a role, albeit a less important and hence less profitable one.

 The point of view of entrepreneurs

Katarzyna Lasota-Heller, lawyer at MIH but speaking in her personal capacity, shared the point of view of entrepreneurs, as flexibility in copyright is very important to them, especially as the digital economy develops. There is a need to deal with copyright on the Internet. There is a need for legal certainty for online companies, and for open and flexible norms that can cope with the pace of technological change. Copyright must be used as a tool to boost entrepreneurship, not as an inhibitor of innovation.

Ms Lasota-Heller notably presented the example of an artist friend that paints still images of films and sells them online. Although he wants to ensure that he is not in breach with copyright, he has found it impossible to clear the rights as no company or association seems competent to do so. As a result, he is fearful of growing his online business in case it is suddenly deemed illegal.

In such a scenario, copyright – and more generally the system of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR – see patent battles at the moment)- limits competitiveness and the creation of new business model. Creators must be remunerated but current IPR is not just protecting the creator but stopping everyone else.

 The old legal solutions as a nuisance?

Beata Stasinska, Book Publisher and Editor, was the last speaker on the panel. She also stressed the need to change the current copyright system as copyright is important for traditional goods, such as books, and society is at the verge of a technological revolution.

As an illustration, the availability of orphan works is crucial. They should be a common good allowed to be shared by political principles and law. Ms Stasinska dreams of a concept of 21st century library of Alexandria, put in place at EU level, not just national, and considers that the old legal solutions are inadequate and even a nuisance.

She finally pointed out that the opportunity makes the thief: piracy is often the result of users not trusting info on product or lack of availability of content, lack of independent information and channels… This last remark triggered a reaction by Professor Hugenholtz at a later stage, whereby he emphasized that the discussion of the flexibility applied to the legal framework should not be confused with the piracy debate, as those two debates are absolutely not related.

The debate then continued from the floor, but dwindled slightly away from the discussion regarding flexibility to address more general elements of the copyright discussion.

Speakers’ Bios

Hanna Wróblewska

Director of Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

Caroline De Cock

Caroline De Cock (LL.M.) is Coordinator of the C4C Coalition and N-square Consulting‘s Founder and Managing Director. Prior to that, she was Director of Regulatory Operation and Policy for the COLT Telecom Group and Director of EU Affairs at Cable & Wireless. She also worked as Legal Adviser at Stanbrook & Hooper, a Competition law firm, and was Deloitte’s youngest Manager worldwide at the age of 24. She is the author of ‘iLobby.eu: Survival Guide to EU Lobbying, Including the Use of Social Media’

Bernt Hugenholtz

Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Director of the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam (IViR); specialist in international law and industrial property law; consultant to the World Intellectual property Organisation (WIPO), the European Commission and several national governments. Author of numerous books, studies and articles on a variety of topics ivolving copyright, information technology, new media and the Internet.

Marzena Wojciechowska

Lawyer at the Press Publishers Chamber, director of Art Lege law firm specializing in intellectual property law protection and the media law. Widely involved in the debate on the subject of copyright including functioning of collective managament societies and fair use. Speaker at numerous conferences, seminars and debates.

Michał Kwiatkowski

Bass and guitar player, member of such music groups as Kazik na Żywo and UR, composer and co-composer of music for theatre spectacles, film translator.

Katarzyna Lasota-Heller

Lawyer, PHD in the Polish and German law, expert in the media law, especially in the context of new technologies and the Internet, officer managing legal risks in Naspers Group, member of the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law, lecturer at the Koźmiński University in Warsaw, head of EDiMA (European Digital Media Association).

Beata Stasińska

Publisher, editor; co-founder and long-time editor-in-chief in the W.A.B. Publishing House. Awarded the National Order of Merit by the President of France, also received the title of „Honoured Cultural Worker” by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage and the title of „Culture Creator” by the Polityka weekly magazine; honoured with „Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis”. Active member of the Citizens of Culture social movement.

Jaroslaw Lipszyc

Jaroslaw Lipszyc is President of the Modern Poland Foundation, board presidium for the Open Education Coalition, committee member of the Citizens of Culture, co-founder of the Stanislaw Brzozowski Association, and audit committee member of the Internet Society of Poland. Before he started working for the Modern Poland Foundation he worked for many years as a journalist, poet and musician, and currently still is an active booster of modern education and open culture. He’s the conceptual author of the portal “Włącz Polskę” (eng: Turn Poland On) published by the Polish Ministry of Education. He’s an active substantive participant in all projects of the Modern Poland Foundation, a trainer in workshops for teachers, and a lecturer on subjects related to new technology, education and Internet law. Jarosław has participated in social action towards organizing consultations on the implementation of the Register of Banned Websites and Services, was a participant of the debate “Ask the Prime Minister”, and debates ACTA and the future of the copyright. He promotes dialogue and cooperation between the NGOs and public administration.

Alek Tarkowski

Alek Tarkowski is the co-founder and director of Centrum Cyfrowe Projekt Polska, a think-and-do-tank that builds tools and methodologies for using digital technologies to increase openness and civic engagement. He’s also the Public Lead of Creative Commons Poland, and a member of both the Council of Information, that advises the Polish Ministry of Administration and Digital affairs, and the Administrative Council of Communia, an international association supporting the digital public domain.

Who benefits most from a shift to a licensing culture? To what extent are people aware that they don’t really own their iTunes library of over 10,000 tracks? Do people understand that licenses can cause access to digital content to be revoked at any time, with little to no explanation? And when is not uncommon for the terms and conditions relating to the purchase of a 10,000 word eBook short story to be longer than the story itself, what chance is there of any Internet user in the world ever paying attention to what they can or cannot do with the information they ‘purchase’ online?

Summary

Part 1: Stakeholder perspectives on the shift towards a licensing model

Stuart Hamilton from the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) thanked UNESCO for hosting this workshop and briefly introduced the panelists. He noted that the main purpose of the workshop was to explore the occurring shift from ownership models of copyrighted works to a licensing model where consumers would pay to get access to works instead of owning them. The workshop intends to shed light on the challenges this shift implies for consumers, creators, digital service providers, policymakers and cultural custodians.

Natali Helberger from the Institute of Information Law, Amsterdam, started the discussion by outlining the main legal differences between owning a work (e.g. a book) and getting a license (e.g. an ebook). The main difference is the exhaustion doctrine which only applies to physical cultural goods: once the book is sold, the rights-holder can no longer control access to it and the book may be borrowed, re-sold etc. The fact that this does not apply in the digital world changes the relationship between rightholders, authors and users and is unclear where the control of rights-holders begins and where it ends? However, in a recent court case the ECJ decided that exhaustion rights also applied to software so the digital licenses model may be about to change. The big question going forward is: How to give form to the relationship between seller, owner, authors in the digital world?

Helene Messier from the Canadian collecting society Copybec summarised the three different types of licenses currently in use in the digital environment: 1) Digital ownership, e.g. an ebook. In principle you own the book or the song just as you would with a book or CD, at least on your device. 2) Subscription type licenses such as Spotify which give the user access to a large catalogue of works which he or she is free to access but does not own. 3) Licenses for large scale uses by institutions such as libraries or universities. This licenses are typically administered directly by collecting societies. Helene explained that the current model, where the number of limitations and exceptions is growing at same time as Technical Protection Measures (TPMs) are increasing, shifts benefits from small sellers to big publishers because while the former receive less money the latter are better able to fence off their content through technical means including where limitations and exceptions would normally apply.

Nick Ashton-Hart from the Computer and Communications Industry Association built his intervention around two key themes: the commercialization of cultural goods and the distribution of benefits. With regards to the former, digital services seek legal certainty and maximum flexibility for creating an attractive product offering while minimising operating costs. With cultural goods these basic needs are frustrated for several reasons: a) It is impossible to be sure that rights you are licensing are really owned by their claimants; b) Licensing remains a hugely resource-intensive process, with different rights holders for the same works in each country and no authoritative source of information on who owns what; c) the different licensors of different rights restrict what can be done with their rights in different ways limiting the options for overall creativity in service design. With the advent of digital services, it has become much more difficult for artists to verify their royalty statements. It is unclear where exactly the royalties from digital services come from and how they were derived. This opacity benefits the middlemen at the expense of artists and digital services, as creators think services don’t pay properly even where the service is paying out in excess of 50% of their revenues to the middlemen. Here are a few recommendations to improve licensing for the digital environment: 1) recognize exhaustion of rights online – once a consumer gets legal access they can do what they want with the works for personal use; 2) copyright owners need to be more transparent about their rights management systems and make all creative works in copyright commercially available; 3) User-generated content (UGC) and any other entirely non-commercial use by end users of copyrighted material should be an inherently legal activity not subject to rent-seeking. While creators should be able to ensure they can be identified as part of a compound UGC work, (or decline to be so identified if they dislike the use made), that shouldn’t frustrate UGC creation.

Nico Perez, the co-founder of Mixcloud, an Internet radio platform offering DJ podcasts, explained that for this service to be viable a new licensing model was necessary as it would be impossible to license the content of the podcasts – largely works by Third parties – individually. On a more global level, the traditional licensing model involving collecting societies is increasingly challenged by direct commercialization e.g. through Youtube and other revenue-sharing models between platforms and artists. To fully unlock the potential of digital services, however, an effective, international copyright exchange will be necessary. Nico also noted that Internet consumers are getting more comfortable with the “access model” as opposed to the ownership model, perhaps because many of them are both creating and consuming content on the web. However, the recent controversy over Instagram’s modified terms of reference suggested that users may pay more attention to the ownership of digital content in the future.

Helienne Lindvall, a songwriter and freelance journalist for The Guardian, noted that she remained cautiously optimistic about the potential of streaming services despite the currently low levels of royalties they provided. As a songwriter, she has a key interest in a functioning licensing model because unlike performers, her income depends entirely on royalties. Helienne hoped that song writers could get a higher percentage of the royalty pie, one that is more similar to radio (where they get 50%). She agreed with some of the previous speakers that licensing should be improved, particularly in Europe where the licensing models are still largely territorial, through copyright exchanges that provide a central source for metadata on rights. This will make it easier to license and make sure the right people are paid.

Gerald Leitner, IFLA, then presented the issue from the perspective of libraries. He noted that library users were not interested in the legal and other mechanisms that prevented them from accessing digital books at the library. They only thing they care about is access. The current environment poses enormous challenges and opportunities to libraries. In principle, the technological progress made it possible to make 24/7 digital libraries a reality but the legal framework makes it impossible. There are several problems. One is that some of the major publishers do not license ebooks to libraries. Another one is that the exhaustion principle does not apply to ebooks. Unfortunately, policymakers are not aware of this problem. Without copyright reform we will not be able to mitigate the social and scientific implications of this shift to a licensing model.

Mokhtar Warida, a diplomat from Egypt, continued to examine the issue from the point of view of a developing country. He noted that there are basically four challenges in developing countries: 1) supply-side constraints – essential tools of a thriving digital market such as widespread access to credit cards and broadband are not available. 2) Demand-side constraints: prices for digital goods need to be compatible with local income levels for a functioning digital market. The exhaustion doctrine allows parallel imports but this does not work in the digital environment. 3) Structural considerations: access in developing countries relies on lending services and secondary market both of which does not exist in the digital environment and 4) librarians are the custodians of our cultural heritage and should remain that in the digital environment. Models in which libraries depend on subscription fees for access undermine this model.
Governments can and should intervene in the event of market inefficiencies which is why the African Group at WIPO is supporting an international treaty on limitations and exceptions for libraries at WIPO. Essentially, limitations and exceptions should not be overwritten by licenses or TPMs.

“Considering you don’t actually own an electronic book and can only use it for a limited set of purposes, aren’t these goods overpriced?”, Stuart asked David Hammerstein from the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue.

David agreed and explained that consumers were caught in the middle of a double standard. On the one hand, digital services bind us with complex legal agreements that greatly limit what we can do with a digital work while on the other hand, they freely use, copy and share our personal information. There is no informed consent what they can do with our personal information and what consumers, in turn, can do with their books. Another thing that’s missing is transparency. Consumers assume that by using services such as Spotify or Amazon they are compensating creators but they don’t know how much goes to the actual creator. Creators are also hurt by this: many consumers would like their money to go directly to artists instead of intermediaries but they have no way of knowing what services pay fair remuneration. This is what we need: 1) clear conditions for consumers (to know what you get etc.). 2) Transparency: know how digital services use information and remunerate artists; and 3) copyright reform: UGC and other uses need to be legalized to make the law compatible with our digital reality. 

Part 2: Discussion and questions from the floor
Simon from the Open Network Initiative explained that policymakers missed an opportunity to set the rules for a just digital environment. “Accidentally”, he explained “we allowed the media industry to set the rules for us”. Those rules, which are constantly changing, do not strike a balance between the needs of consumers, rights-holders, digital services and creators. culture and commerce, in Simon’s view.

Helienne replied that she strongly supported copyright because it enabled her to make music. To give an example, if she needed a loan from a bank to support a year-long project, copyright is the only liability the bank would accept. Further, Helienne noted that she was not a supporter of compulsory licenses, which many people think would promote licensing in the digital environment. For her, the danger is that it would lead to a race to the bottom. Overall, there are some encouraging signs as legal access to music is growing in the developed world and the music industry is finally serious about making metadata, a prerequisite to licensing, more widely available.

Mariana from the Brazilian Government explained that Governments always tried to find balanced solutions. To give an example, Governments are not against TPMs per se as long as they do not impede legitimate uses protected by limitations and exceptions.

Nico suggested that more prominence should be given to alternative licensing models such as Creative Commons.

Natalie explained that the real problem were not TPMs per se but how copyright is exercised. While market failures are prevalent in many areas, the copyright system would be sufficiently flexible to deal with them.

Gerald noted that libraries will have to find solutions with the publishers. Otherwise, users will find other, illegal channels to access digital material.

Nick agreed with Natalie that technically, copyright has the flexibility to deal with many of the identified market failures. However, many incumbents in the commercial sphere who will not give way until they are forced by lawmakers. One thing that needs to change: we should stop
assuming that all uses need to be subject to a license. Non-commercial uses do not necessarily need to require a license and commercial uses should be subject to low administrative fees. Creators all over the world would benefit from this because it would provide them with better access to the developed market. Right now, if you are a musician in New York or London, you have far greater access to markets. The music industry needs to move from a model of scarcity to a model of abundancy in line with user expectations in the digital environment.

Helene did not share Nick’s opinion. According to her, some non-commercial uses should continue to require a license. More generally, she thought that the current regime of limitations and exceptions was unbalanced and detrimental for creators. The problem of artists didn’t have to do with copyright, in her view, but with unbalanced power relations that saddle creators with unfavorable contractual obligations.

David opposed this notion and said that in fact limitations and exceptions were fair and balanced. He agreed with Mokhtar to elevate the issue of access according to the development agenda and with Nick on the need to move towards an abundancy model for cultural good in the online environment. In summary, consumers ask for fair uses, fair dealings and fair prices online.

Stuart then thanked the panelists and the audience for their participation.

Recommendations:

• The the implications of a shift to a licensing model of accessing digital content impacts of the shift towards a licensing model in the digital world should become a topic of should become a topic of the WSIS work programme as it has profound impacts on access to knowledge.
• Develop a legal model that ensures that consumers benefit from the same rights and privileges when it comes to the consumption of digital goods as they do in the analog world.
• Promote the development of national and international digital copyright exchanges to facilitate licensing of digital services that is frictionless and low cost for the licensing activity to spur development of innovation in use and maximise the proportion of revenue that goes to creators.
• Promote copyright reform to legalize certain uses to bring the law in line with our digital reality – such as allowing non-commercial uses of works by end-users to be free of licensing.
• Promote transparency to ensure consumers know what proportion of the fees for access they pay actually go to creators – and how their personal information is being used.
• Develop best practice for terms and conditions for the purchase/licensing of digital goods.
• Prominence should be given to alternative licensing models (e.g. Creative Commons) that provide greater flexibility and usability in the digital environment.
• Libraries, archives, and memory institutions generally should have access to all works whether in copyright or notcommercial and non-commercial works, and licensing issues should not obstruct their activities nor require them to invest in burdensome compliance costs given their inherently public service functions.
• The administrative costs for commercial and non-commercial copyright law compliance need to be dramatically reduced and existing rights management infrastructures need to become more open, so anyone can find basic information on who controls or owns what rights and what creators are associated to all their creations. This would greatly improve market access to creators from developing countries but also allow all creators to be more visible and able to understand who claims to be their economic representatives (and who, therefore, they should be seeing payment from).

The meeting was attended by around 40 senior figures from the Czech Copyright community, including a Senator from the majority party, the head of the Government’s copyright section and senior officials from other Ministries, the Head of the National Gallery, the Deputy Head of the National Library, the President of the Czech Pirate Party, the Founder of the Creative Commons in the Czech Republic, the Heads of the big collecting societies, the Lead representative of the recording industry, media executive, leading experts from academia and civil society and senior representatives from the technology sector. The discussions were moderated by Jolana Voldánová, a professional news anchor who works for the Czech National Television.

Tomas Svoboda, the Head of the Digitisation and Technology Section at the Czech National Library opened the event on behalf of Director-General Tomas Böhm. He stressed the deep involvement of the National Library with Copyright legislation and briefly outlined the Library’s approach to data management. From his perspective, all the works of the library, be it physical books or digital, should be made available for free to the public.

The Needs of Creators in the Digital Age

Konrad Boehmer, a noted composer and former president of Dutch collecting society BUMA/Stemra, followed with a passionate speech about the role of authors in the current distribution system for musical works. In a brief historical excursion, he offered a look at the monetization of music over time and observed that with the invention of recorded music at the beginning of the 20th century, music was transformed from being a cultural service to being a commercial commodity. Recorded music lowered the value of music, which, in turn, allowed it to infiltrate private and public spaces at an unprecedented level. In Mr. Boehmer’s words, “art music degenerated into entertainment and finally entertainment degenerated into an acoustic narcotic drug”. At the same time as it pushed down the value of music, Mr. Boehmer argued, the industry raised the price of music more and more.

As a result of this, when the Internet broke the monopoly distribution model of the music industry, an entire generation was no longer willing to pay what the music industry asked them to. Instead of dealing with this new reality, however, the music industry started to sue its own customers in a desperate attempt to turn back the clocks. Given that streaming services pay artist only about $0.0033 per song, the agitation of the music industry over “unlicensed” uses is hypocritical, in Mr. Boehmer’s view. However, while he did not envision a bright future for the current distribution model for commercial music, he concluded that there would always be musicians and people who would like to listen to them. In that spirit, Mr. Boehmer ended his speech with four recommendations to improve the management of authors’ rights in Europe:

1. Create one single, digital administration center for authors’ right in Europe. Further, Author’s rights should be rigidly separated from all the other, neighbouring rights, which are fundamentally economic rights.
2. There should be one single Authors’ Right for the entire continent. The starting point for such a right should be the Berne Convention, which limits the definition of rights owners to creators.
3. Collecting societies have to respect the provisions of the Berne Convention and protect final and complete “works of art”, not tiny fragments such as samples used to create new works.
4. Collecting societies should only collect royalties for commercial uses of music. Uses with no commercial intention such as those by schools should never require payment.

Libraries Still Waiting for a Breakthrough on Out-of-Commerce Works

The next speaker was Zdenek Matusik, from the Association of Library and Information Professionals of the Czech Republic (SKIP). His presentation focused on the interaction between copyright and out-of-commerce works (OCW), including orphan works. OCW are works, which the rightsholder has decided are no longer commercially available regardless of the existence of library and privately owned copies. While there are successful initiatives in countries like France to digitise 20th century OCW, there is currently no comparable model available to Czech libraries.

The recently adopted Directive on certain permitted uses of Orphan Works is a step in the right direction. However, as Mr. Matusik argued, its limited scope will not facilitate mass digitisation of Orphan Works. Also, as it does not cover photographs, memory institution will not be able to digitise their massive collections of orphan photographs.

The fundamental question is: How can libraries decide whether a work is out of copyright? The financial and other resources required under the current procedure are prohibitive to the digitisation of the vast majority of works – a tragedy for our shared cultural heritage, as Mr. Matusik pointed out. He noted that the libraries recently had a meeting with the other stakeholders in the Czech Republic to address the OCW problem. The idea was simple: all works would be covered by extended collective licensing and made available via “access terminals” in libraries and education institutions. As a safeguard measure, authors could always decide to opt-out of the system. The problem, however, as Mr. Matusik explained, is that this model does not really make the works publicly accessible but limits its use to a small number of terminals.

Archiving the Internet for Future Generations

Next up was Michal Pupcsik, project leader of Webarchiv.cz at the National Library of the Czech Republic. Webarchiv.cz is a joint initiative of libraries and universities to create a historic record of Czech websites. While Webarchiv.cz would like to archive all Czech websites, be they commercial or non-commercial, the project faces resource constraints, which is why they have established a process to determine the importance of websites.

At the beginning, it was challenging to establish the necessary licensing agreements, to get the project off the ground. For example, it took up to five years to enter into licensing agreements with certain Government agencies. In this context, Mr. Pupcsik commended Creative Commons licenses for having greatly facilitated the licensing process. However, as he noted, it can sometimes be difficult to confirm whether a website is under a Creative Commons license and manual check-up is often required. Ideally, in Mr. Pupcsik’s view, there would be mandatory Print Act in the Czech Republic to facilitate archiving of websites, as is already the case in certain other countries.

Questioned on how they dealt with publishers who wanted their content to disappear, Mr. Pupsik replied that they would always honor requests from rights holders to remove content.

Copyright vs. Access to Information in the Digital Age

Petr Jansa, a Copyright lawyer and the founder of Creative Commons in the Czech Republic, followed up with a discussion on the role of Copyright in the digital age. He commended the National Library for promoting open standards and deplored the challenging legal environment in which it currently found itself, a system that took him several years to understand as a lawyer.

In Mr. Jansa’s view it is paradoxical that Internet users have gotten used to finding all the information they seek with the click of a mouse – despite the underlying complexity of the copyright system. “As an entire generation is growing accustomed to new ways of interacting with copyrighted works, such as sampling and remixing, the copyright system will ultimately need to accommodate those uses”, he observed, “unless we want to live in world where everybody who knows how to use the Internet is a criminal”.

Mr. Jansa agreed with Mr. Boehmer that authors should be put at the heart of the copyright debate as they contribute the most value of the involved stakeholders. “Although”, he cautioned, “it should be acknowledged that they, too, build upon past works”. According to Mr. Jansa, going back to a registering system for copyrighted works, similar to the current patent system, would help cure many of the ills of the current system, such as the OCW problem mentioned by Mr. Matusik. This would also be where Creative Common licenses could play an important role, he concluded.

Asked about how to simplify the current system, Mr. Jansa suggested going back to the principles of the Berne Convention and finding the best way to implement them in the current environment. In other words, “let’s defend principles, not interests”.

A representative from the Czech Pirate Party stated that in his view, and based on our experience with copyright, policy makers would be ill advised to assume that copyright promoted creativity.

Mr. Jansa supported this view and noted that there was creativity before there was copyright. “If you look at how the masterpieces by the likes of Mozart were developed, they dependent on rich people to fund them.” According to Mr. Jansa, we have replaced this system of patronage with a new form of dependency. “Maybe in the future, we will be able to develop a system where authors neither need hit men, nor patrons to support them.”

A representative from the Czech chapter of Creative Commons observed that while the title of the event was about how copyright could drive creativity, all the speakers pointed to areas where copyright constrained creativity and access.

At this point, Mr. Roman Strejcek, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Czech Collecting Society OSA, intervened in the discussion. He noted that he had long be critical of the evolution of the Copyright Act. However, while some basic principles had been lost over the years, one fundamental truth remained: Authors cannot protect their works individually. According to Mr. Strejcek, the advent of copyright was liberating for authors. While they were previously dependent on rich people, they now had a the equivalent of a labor code. Like other speakers before him, Mr. Strejcek stressed the fact that the author is at the very beginning of the value chain. Without the composition, none of the middlemen would exist. “Unfortunately”, Mr. Strejcek continued “copyright became more and more about protecting the investments of large corporations over the years and the authors were increasingly pushed to the side”. On the question of royalties for artists, Mr. Strejcek admitted that royalties of under 10 per cent on CD were low. However, he drew attention to the fact that this number was in proportion to original selling price. So if price dropped, the author would still get the original royalties.

Opportunities and Challenges of the Czech Copyright Review

The last speaker to take the floor was Jiri Cermak, a copyright lawyer from Baker & McKenzie ’s Prague office. Mr. Cermak started with a brief summary of the amendment process for the Czech Copyright Act, which was currently underway. He noted that among some of the expected modifications was an extension to the Internet of collective management through compulsory licensing, although certain areas such as streaming services would not be included. Mr. Cermak was skeptical whether that was a good approach and noted that authors may feel restricted in an opt-out model.

With regards to the reproduction of works for personal use, Mr. Cermak did not expect the amendments to change the current regime considerably. The Copyright Act contains a specific list of copyright exceptions whose limits are set out by the three-step test of the Berne Convention. The problem with this approach, according to Mr. Cermak, is that an exhaustive list can never cover all the legitimate uses of a copyrighted work. For example, whistling a pop song would not be covered by an exception so in principle, one could argue that a license was required. This is why Mr. Cermak was in favor of a more flexible model for copyright exceptions such as the US fair use doctrine.

Debate on the Role of Copyright

The presentations were followed by an open, spirited debate among the attendees which broadly touched on issues such as the general objectives of copyright, its current state and possible improvements. Some of the highlights of the debate are summarized below.

Mr. Pavel Zeman, Head of the Copyright Section at the Ministry of Culture, joined the discussion and noted that in his view, Authors Rights should first and foremost protect the rights of creators. He observed that while one used to require a publisher to sell a book, people now were able to do this over the Internet at almost no cost. In this context, he acknowledged the value of Creative Commons licenses to help provide authors with more options to make their works available. However, with regards to the current debate on educational uses and text mining, Mr. Zeman noted that he did not share the view of other speakers who suggested that scientific authors should have less protection than others. In his view, every author should be attributed the same rights in his or her intellectual property – a right that shall not yield to other legal principles such as the right to education.

Mr. Cermak said that he disagreed with the view that all authors wanted to own their works. While all artists want to be creative, not everybody felt that they were being oppressed by the music industry.

A representative of the recording industry noted that she was opposed to the idea that authors were being enslaved and pointed out that they were free to choose between traditional copyright protections and alternative models such as Creative Commons. She raised concerns that some politicians do no longer seem to understand the value of copyright and went on to explain the situation of copyrighted works on the Internet with an analogy: As long as there were only few cars and they were all parked in a garage, their was virtually no theft of cars. However, as the cars became many and started to be parked out on the streets, car theft became a problem. She concluded her example by noting that society should strive to protect all cars, including those parked out on the street.

Mr. Jansa replied that he did not think this was an accurate analogy. While a stolen car is gone, an unlicensed copy of a copyrighted work is just that, a copy.

A representative from the Czech chapter of Creative Commons noted that the current model did not put Creative Commons works on an equal footing with other copyrighted works. While he did not think that there was a need to abolish copyright or CMOs, Creative Commons works should be more integrated in the system. “For example”, he asked, “if we play an Internet radio station using Creative Commons works, do we need to pay royalties?”

According to Mr. Streject from OSA this depended on the circumstances. If a user can prove that all works were made under Creative Commons licenses, CMOs will not claim royalties from an Internet radio station but they need to be certain. As other speakers before him, Mr. Strejcek noted that traditional copyright and Creative Commons licenses did not go against each other. While the car analogy was one way of looking at it, he thought that comparing copyright to labor laws was more accurate characterisation. “One could argue that abolishing labor laws would lead to more employment”, he explained, “but that would not be a sensible thing to do”.

Mr. Boehmer went on to explain what he considered to be one of the shortfalls of Creative Commons licenses: A radio station playing Creative Commons music has already paid royalties under normal circumstances and the creators of those works do not get paid. “In reality”, he concluded, “authors are born into a web of pre-existing systems. This is the problem.”

Mr. Nick Ashton-Hart from the Computer and Communications Industry Association tried to build on the discussion by adding some historical context. Mr. Ashton-Hart, who, as a former manager of featured artists had multiple years of experience with the music industry, noted that the main purpose of the old model was to get the works to consumers. This changed radically with the rise of the Internet, which Mr. Ashton-Hart likened to the steam engine of our times. “Before the steam engine”, he explained, “people in England did not live in a shared time zone. Every town had adopted its own time; partly because of technological reasons, partly because they could not agree.” He encouraged the participants to accept what history told us and recognize that changes will be necessary. While certain types of music would continue to be based around multinational distributors, in his view, everybody would have to be open to find new ways to make a living. “It is important that we work together to develop a new system, one that’s based on the needs of creators”, said Mr. Ashton-Hart, “otherwise, legislators will cease to pay attention to the issue as some point.”

“We can not risk to have a lost generation of musicians because we have not adapted the system to modern realities”, he concluded.

Speaking on the role of CMOs, Mr. Strejcek, noted that Anglo-American authors were currently excluded from OSA’s catalogue. Consequently, if a digital service provider like Google wanted to license in all of Europe, there could turn to one single body. In addition to that, there is nothing that would prevent anybody from slacking a national monopoly. However, in Mr. Strejcek’s view, the oligarchy structure that this could lead to would be even worse for authors.

With this, the final Copyright For Creativity event of the year was history. More C4C events are planned for 2013, starting with the WSIS +10 Review Events at UNESCO’s Headquarters in Paris in February, followed by the C4C event in Warsaw.

Speakers’ Bios

Tomáš Böhm

Mr. Böhm (1961) is the Director-General of the National Library of the Czech Republic. In the 1990s, he worked as a consultant in several companies and then as a finance manager at Creditanstalt Securities. At the turn of the millennium, he became a finance manager in Ringier ČR, where he was also a Member of the Board. From 2001, he successfully managed the company for five years. During the past several years, he has focused on economic consulting, emergency management, and media consulting in the field of printed media and book production. He has a degree from the University of Economics in Prague, and also studied in London. He speaks five languages. His hobbies include mainly literature and theatre.

Konrad Boehmer

Konrad is a noted composer of orchestral, dramatic, chamber and electronic music and for 35-years a professor of composition and music history at the Royal Conservatory, The Hague. He has been active in the authors’ rights movement as a member of CIAM, the international body representing composer-members of authors societies worldwide for 40 years as well many years spent as the immediate past President of BUMA/Stemra, the authors’ society of the Netherlands. He brings an understanding of the changing creative process for composers over recent decades of dramatic technological development and an insiders view of how the digital age has affected the management of rights and what can be done to improve access to works for all whilst ensuring creators’ rights are respected.

Zdeněk Matušík

Mr. Zdeněk Matušík is Chair of the International Relations Commission, Association of Library and Information Professionals of the Czech Republic (SKIP).
After holding positions in a museum and in a the editorial office of a magazine, he has worked in the National Library of the Czech Republic in the public services section since 1990. Mr. Matušík focuses on the legal issues, especially those concerning copyright law, connected with the provision of library and information services. He is also a member of the Association of Library and Information Professionals of the Czech Republic (SKIP) and is a correspondent member of EBLIDA.

Michal Pupcsik,
Michal Pupcsik is Project Leader at the Webarchiv.cz, National Library of the Czech Republic. Born in Kladno in 1974, he currently studies information studies and librarianship (INSK) at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. He has worked in bank IT (KB, IPB, ČSOB, ČMSS) since 1995, focusing primarily on development and administration of intranet systems and DMS.His interest in books and his need to archive everything brought him to the field of librarianship and to work in the web archive of the National Library of the Czech Republic. Hobbies: collector; currently building a private regional archive of old photographs and other memorables.

Petr Jansa

Petr Jansa is Copyright Lawyer and founder of Creative Commons CZ. Mr. Jansa is a lawyer and is most interested in how law forms public space. He encountered the limits of the existing copyright system when working on the Czech version of the Creative Commons license. He has obtained a deeper understanding of how much we deform our common space with law thanks to his cooperation with
Transparency International in the field of good administration and anti-corruption efforts. He currently works as a consultant as well as on his own projects.

Jiří Čermák

Jiří Čermák heads the Intellectual Property Group of the Baker & McKenzie’s Prague office. He has authored and co-authored a number of studies and publications, including Internet and Copyright Law. Mr. Čermák serves as vice president of the Czech IT Law Society, and is presently an arbiter for the Alternative Dispute Resolution for .eu domain name disputes. He is also admitted in the Czech Bar Association.

Jolana Voldánová, Moderator, Czech Television

Jolana Voldánová has been a news anchor and worked for the News Editorial Office of the Czech Television since 1993.
She previously worked for the Czechoslovak Radio from 1989-1992. Her television career includes a number of formats and shows: Daily News and Evening News (1993 – 1994), “21” (1994) and News and News Plus (since 1995).

Roman Strejček

Ing. Roman Strejček is Chairman of the Board of Directors of OSA. He joined OSA in August 2005 as head of the broadcasting and on-line media department. He was appointed as a member of the board of OSA in December 2006, and has been chairman of the board of OSA since October 2007. Before joining OSA, he spent five years in the Swedish company Plus Licens operating in Central and Eastern Europe and in Scandinavia. This company dealt with licensing of TV and film products, fashion and sports brands in the area of promotion, broadcasting, and publishing. Education: graduated from the University of Economics, Prague with an Ing. degree

On May 30th, C4C, in cooperation with library and consumer organisations, co-organised two events on copyright limitations and exceptions in the library of the European Parliament in Brussels. The events, which were hosted by Dutch Member of Parliament Marietje Schaake, focused on how copyright could better serve the needs of libraries and consumers respectively. In the audience were Members of the European Parliament, European Commission staff, and representatives from library and consumer organizations, NGOs, industry and rightsholder associations. Thanks to a mix of expert presentations, Oxford-style debates and an open and inclusive format, participants were able to address a number of “difficult” issues in a constructive and thought-provoking manner.

What copyright reforms are needed by libraries?

The first event, titled “Index or footnote? How to ensure that libraries power the information society”, was organised in partnership with the European Bureau of Library Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA), the Electronic Information For Libraries (eIFL), the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), and Information Sans Frontières (ISF). It focused on the role of libraries and archives in providing access to cultural works, the many legal challenges they face in the digital world and how it impacts innovation, competition, and productivity.

In her welcome address, Member of Parliament Marietje Schaake reminded the attendees of the important role libraries played in today’s information society. In the following keynote presentation, Kai Ekholm, the national librarian of Finland, touched on a number of current challenges for libraries, including the “new book economy” which threatens to create increasingly closed systems and new monopolies in the printing sector, and the need for public funding and market solutions to help libraries carry out their function in the digital environment. The following panel discussion, moderated by a noted musician and music producer Martyn Ware and with the participation of Toby Bainton (senior policy adviser, ISF), Pernille Drost (president, Danish Library Union), Mariana Harjevschi (director, Public Law Library in Chisinau, Moldova), and Harald Müller (library director, Max Planck Institute for comparative public law and international law) highlighted the need for a copyright regime that’s fit for the digital age, in particular in the areas of preservation (where the law often permits only one copy to be made whereas digital material usually requires several copies); contracts (which are essential for online material but which should never override statutory copyright provisions); liability (which should provide some protection for cultural institutions acting in good faith); reproduction; lending; and orphan works (for which policymakers were asked to provide practical, usable solutions that will enable mass digitisation).

A brief overview of the international copyright landscape by Lucie Guibault, senior researcher at the University of Amsterdam, was followed by an introduction by Barbara Szczepanska, the Library and Information Services Manager at the law firm Hogan Lovell in Warsaw, to a Draft Treaty Proposal by library organisations which is currently being discussed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

In the second panel of the morning, MEP Marietje Schaake, head of the Copyright Unit at the European Commission Maria Martin-Prat, and Counsellor for Intellectual Property at the BrazilianMission to the EU Luciano Mazza de Andrade, discussed the international political processes that could strengthen copyright limitations and exceptions for libraries. While Brazil is one of the leading voices at WIPO in support of an international instrument on exceptions for libraries, the European Union, led by the European Commission, is more reluctant to engage in any exercise that could lead to a binding solution. It was noted by the panelists, however, that libraries now have more of a voice in Brussels and offer valuable opinions at a time when the Commission is considering important legislative reforms such as those on orphan works and collecting societies.
Participants of the event had many opportunities to participate in the discussions throughout the morning. As one could expect from such a diverse group of policy experts, a wide range of viewpoints were expressed. While many were in support of copyright reform that would benefit libraries, some considered the current copyright framework flexible enough for the needs of libraries.

How can we make copyright work for consumers?

The afternoon session, titled “I want it now! Creators addressing consumers’ needs in the digital age” was co-organised with the European Consumers’ Organisation (BEUC) and Consumers International (CI). In his introduction, BEUC’s Kostas Rossoglou pointed out that certain uses of copyrighted material such as the recording of TV shows for later viewing or the scanning of studio portraits onto one’s computer have become common practice among consumers, are generally tolerated by rightsholders but their lawfulness varies country-by-country. This can lead to frustration among consumers who often fail to understand copyright and may undermine its legitimacy among certain groups.

The introduction set the stage for the following three Oxford-style debates on specific copyright propositions. Each side had five minutes to make their arguments and 2.5 minutes for rebuttal. It was agreed that all speakers participated in their personal capacity and no quotes will be attributed to their institutions.

Debate 1: There are uses of music in education that should never require payment.

The first debate was moderated by IFLA’s Director of Policy Stuart Hamilton. The “pro” side, represented by Martyn Ware and the ex-president of the Dutch collecting society Buma/Stemra Konrad Boehmer, argued that the Berne convention only covers the commercial use of author’s rights and collecting societies should limit themselves to collecting royalties for those uses. The non-commercial, private use of works such as those by educational institutions should be free. No obstacles should prevent composers to be heard in schools.

The “contra” side, which was represented by CISAC’s Communications Manager Marianne Rollet and Buma/Stemra’s Public Affairs manager Robbert Baruch, acknowledged that schools should only pay a nominal fee for the use of works but stressed the importance of the fundamental principle of creators being justly remunerated for their work. Educational institutions still need to pay for other services such as electricity. Why should it be different for cultural works?

The other side replied that it is not worth collecting a token fee and pointed out that collecting societies are already making exceptions to that fundamental principle, e.g. they do not collect money at funerals. As long as the use of a work is not of a commercial nature, no royalties should be collected. The “contra” side rebutted that argument by saying that no creation comes for free and not paying for its use diminishes the value of culture and goes against pluralism in creativity. In addition to that, there are many grey areas where there is no clear distinction between commercial and non-commercial uses. It was suggested by somebody from the audience that all creators should be free to choose how they want to be remunerated for their work since modern technology allows us to have a much more personalised rights management system.

Debate 2: Users and creators must be able to use copyrighted material to produce a new compound work for non-commercial purposes without needing a licence

The second debate, which was moderated by Nick Ashton-Hart from the Computer and Communications Industry Association featured Paul Keller from Creative Commons and Kelvin Smits from Younison, Europe’s association of independent musicians, on the “pro” side. The “contra” side was represented by Liv Vaisberg from the Federation of European Publishers and Mario Peña from the copyright registry Safe Creative.

The “contra” team noted they had no problem with the proposition per se as long as 1) the original creator is correctly credited to respect his or her moral rights, 2) the use is strictly non-commercial, 3) the original author will be informed of the use (and can prevent it if desired) and, 4) remunerated should the work become commercial. Copyright already allows you to quote – or “sample” – works for free as long as the use is not commercial. The problem is that with the Internet, it is often no longer clear whether a use is commercial or not.

According to the “pro” side, the current copyright regime, which requires a license for every snippet of music, hampers creativity as it makes it financially impossible for compound works to be commercially released. Typically, 100% of the profit of a track created using samples of music, even if they are not recognisable, will be lost in licensing fees. The current system only works for major artists whose labels can pay the licensing fees and leads to two different classes of creators.

The “contra” side replied that intermediaries such as Youtube and Flickr do make money off of compound works. Why shouldn’t some of that money go back to the original creator? The other side agreed and replied that those platforms do, in fact, collect money and re-distribute it to some of the original creators. All panelists agreed that licensing should become more flexible and allow creators to determine how their works can be used.

A member of the audience pointed out that creators have always been stealing from each other. Composers such as Schubert, Schumann and Mozart were all ‘sampling’ from their colleagues and would all be considered ‘pirates’ today. However, it is important to note that making a reference to an existing song does not reduce the commercial value of the original, quite to the contrary, it makes it more interesting.

Debate 3: Consumers should be able to use lawfully-acquired/licensed copyrighted material for any purpose within their home and personal network

In the final debate of the day, moderated by Jeremy Malcolm from Consumers International, consumer representatives David Hammerstein and Joe McNamee discussed with Elisabeth Sjaastad from the Federation of European Film Directors and Burak Özgen, the Senior Legal Advisor at GESAC, the European association of authors and composers societies.

The “pro” side started by saying that one of the fundamental problems of the digital marketplace is that the copyright industries do not trust consumers. Unlike other products they purchase, consumer can not use digital works the way they want. Technical limitations make it impossible for consumers to make backup copies, shift it to a different format and share it with their personal network. The fact that the majority of EU citizens breach copyright law on a daily basis makes it clear that the current regime is not widely accepted.

The other side agreed that private copies should be allowed but they need to be accompanied by a fair compensation for rightholders. Ideally, the remuneration should be determined according to the actual use of the products for private copying – based on consumer surveys by the right holders and the ICT industry. In countries where there is no private copying exception and no accompanying remuneration, the costs for licensing private copies are reflected in the license fee and right holders use technical restrictions to limit the number of private copies.

Further, the “contra” side held that the line between exploitation and personal enjoyment has never been completely obvious, and has gotten more difficult to discern as networked digital technology enables ordinary people to engage in acts of mass dissemination at virtually no expense. Where a private use competes with commercial uses at the heart of the copyright owner’s exploitation of his or her works, the potential of this private use to undermine the possibility to recoup an already highly risky initial investment should be a cause for concern. This could ultimately threaten the public’s interest in an adequate supply of professional creative works.

The “pro” side countered that rather than focusing on limiting access to their works, the entertainment industry should do more to create a competitive legal marketplace for digital works. The real drivers of piracy are inadequate pricing models and the lack of a single market for digital products in Europe. The “contra” side pointed that there is not enough demand for global or pan-european licenses at the moment. In addition to that, the current models used to finance the production of cultural works often rely on territorial licensing. For example, to receive funding for a film, one might need to give away the distribution rights in certain territories. As long as producers are dependent on this model, we will not be able to create a single market.

As Jeremy Malcolm pointed out in his wrap-up presentation there are a number of measures that could help to address the perceived imbalance of copyright legislation caused by recent developments such as term extensions, anti-circumvention laws, the HADOPI law in France and ACTA. These may include gratuitous collective licensing of certain uses to consumers, an agreed moratorium on enforcement of rights for such uses, or a set of best practice guidelines that consumers and creators could agree upon. The main outcome of the event was a broad consensus to move forward on the last of these suggestions, by way of work towards the development of a best practice standard.

More than 100 guests registered for the two events, and based on the feedback we received most of them saw the two events as a positive contribution to the European copyright debate. We hope they help drive legislative reforms that will accommodate the needs of libraries, archives, memory institutions and consumers in the digital age. Stay tuned for more events in 2012!

Further reading:

• IFLA report on the two events
• Consumers International report on consumer event
• Consumers International blog post on consumer event

Speakers’ Bios

Marietje Schaake

Marietje Schaake is a Member of the European Parliament for the Dutch Democratic Party (D66) with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) political group. She serves on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, where she focuses on neighbourhood policy, Turkey in particular; human rights, with a specific focus on freedom of expression, internet freedom, press freedom; and Iran. In the Committee on Culture, Media, Education, Youth and Sports she works on Europe’s Digital Agenda and the role of culture and new media in the EUŽs external actions. In the Committee on International Trade she focuses on intellectual property rights, the free flow of information and the relation between trade and foreign affairs.
Marietje is a member of the delegation for relations with the United States and a substitute member on the delegations with Iran and the Western Balkan countries. She is also a founder of the European Parliament Intergroup on New Media and Technology. Marietje is a Member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and vice-president of the supervisory board of Free Press Unlimited.
Before joining the European Parliament, she worked as an independent advisor to governments, diplomats, businesses and NGO’s, on issues of transatlantic relations, diversity and pluralism, civil and human rights.

Kai Ekholm

Ph.D. Kai Ekholm has been the Director of the National Library of Finland since the year 2002. He received the honorary title of Professor in 2004. In 2009, the Governing Board of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) nominated Ekholm as the Chairman of FAIFE (Committee on Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression). Kai Ekholm has lectured on censorship and the freedom of speech for about twenty years. During his career, he has written over 20 books on electronic publication and censorship. His online publications include Kielletyt kirjat (Banned Books, 1997). In his doctoral thesis (2000) Ekholm treated political censorship in Finnish libraries from 1944 to 1946.

Martyn Ware

Martyn Ware was a founding member of the internationally successful pop bands the Human League and Heaven 17 and a producer of multi-million-selling worldwide hit recordings for Tina Turner, Terence Trent D’Arby, Chaka Khan, Erasure, Marc Almond and Mavis Staples amongst many others. He also lectures extensively on music production, technology and creativity and creates cutting edge three-dimensional sound and light-based multimedia installations in collaboration with other creators. He brings an understanding of how performers, composers, and digital artists collaborate in digital media and the inherent needs they have to reuse and transform creative works of other as a part of that process.

Toby Bainton

Toby Bainton is Senior Policy Adviser at Information Sans Frontieres. Toby spent the first part of his career working in university libraries, most recently as the director of the library of the University of Reading (60 km west of London). He then became (1995-2010) the chief executive of the association of UK and Irish university librarians, SCONUL. He is now senior policy adviser for Information Sans Frontieres, a group which works to promote favourable laws and policies for cultural institutions, especially in the European Parliament, the Commission, and the Council of Ministers.

Pernille Drost

Pernille Drost is the President of the Danish Trade Union representing 4.000 library- and information specialists, from both the public and private sector. Pernille Drost is member of The Council for Protection of Intellectual Works (UBVA) in Denmark and previous member of the IFLA/FAIFE committee. She is a public speaker on library issues and the development of information competencies both as an individual and as society. She is also a debater on copyright issues and the conditions for accessing and distributing information with emphasis to the (in)balance between the publishing industry, libraries and copyright legislation. Pernille Drost also holds seats in various boards and committees primarily within the labour market and educational area.

Mariana Harjevschi

Mariana Harjevschi is a Director of the Public Law Library, branch of the Municipal Library “B.P.Hasdeu” in Chisinau, Moldova. In November 2008, she was elected for four years term as a vice President of Library Association in Moldova.
Since 2008, Mariana Harjevschi acts as eIFL IP copyright librarian within eIFL Direct Moldova Consortia, member of eIFL, dealing with copyright issues for librarians and advocating fair and balanced copyright legislation in Moldova. For the period of 2009-2013 Mariana Harjevschi is a member of the Copyright and Legal Committee of IFLA.
She holds a Bachelor Degree in Library Science and Information Assistance (1999) and a Master’s in Journalism and Communication Sciences (2001), both from Moldova State University. During 2004-2005 Mariana Harjevschi completed the Junior Faculty Development Program at School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University in Bloomington, US.

Harald Müller

Harald Müller is a German librarian, lawyer and the director of the library of the Max Planck Institute for comparative public law and international law in Heidelberg. The library has a collection of approx. 620,000 volumes and is considered to be the largest collection in public international law and European law in Europe. He is a well-known expert of library law and up to 2009 he was the chairmen of the legal commission (Rechtskommission) of the German library association.
At present he is the deputy speaker of the Coalition for Action “Copyright for Education and Research” and a member of the Experts Group on information Law (EGIL) of the European office of library, information and documentation Associations (EBLIDA), the document delivery and resource sharing section of IFLA (International Federation of library associations), the German Alliance of Research Organizations legal experts group, as well as the legal experts group of NESTOR, the German authority network to digital long-term archiving.
Earlier activities included posts in national and international library organizations such as the German Library Institute, the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL) and the IFLA Committee for copyright and legally matters. Mueller lectures in library right at the Bavarian library school.
See http://www.mpil.de/ww/de/pub/organisation/wiss_bereich/hmueller.cfm.

Lucie Guibault

Dr. Lucie Guibault is senior researcher at the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She studied law at the Université de Montréal (Canada) and received in 2002 her doctorate from the University of Amsterdam, where she defended her thesis on Copyright Limitations and Contracts.
She is specialized in international and comparative copyright and intellectual property law. Her interests further include database protection, computer software and Internet issues, as well as contractual matters relating to information. Dr. Guibault is currently doing research on the Licensing framework of Europeana, an EC funded project on the digitization and dissemination of the European cultural heritage.

Maria Martin-Prat

Ms. Martin-Prat is Head of the Copyright Unit in the Commission Internal Market Directorate General. Her Unit is responsible for the development and enforcement of the EU “acquis” in the area of copyright and related rights as well as for international negotiations in bodies such as the World Intellectual Property Organisation.
Before joining the Copyright Unit, Ms Martin-Prat was already a Head of Unit in DG MARKT, responsible for free movement of services and freedom of establishment issues, notably the 2006 Services Directive. Prior experience in the Commission includes being a member of the Cabinet of Commissioner Joaquin Almunia and several posts in DG MARKT.
Ms. Martin-Prat is admitted as a solicitor in Spain and has two postgraduate degrees on European Law. She is fluent in Spanish, English and French.

Luciano Mazza de Andrade

Luciano Mazza de Andrade is a Counsellor at the Brazilian Ministry of External Relations and Head of the Trade and Economic Section of the Brazilian Mission to the European Union, where he has been serving since April 2010. In his career in the diplomatic service he has worked extensively with trade and integration policies, both is his posts abroad and his assignments in Brazil. Before moving to Brussels, he was General Coordinator for WTO Dispute Settlement, in Brasilia. Previously, he served at the Brazilian Embassy in London and at the Permanent Representation of Brazil to the Latin American Integration Association and to Mercosur, in Montevideo.
He has a Masters degree in European Law (LLM) from the LSE and defended a thesis of High Studies on Mercosur’s institutions at the Brazilian Diplomatic Academy.

Kostas Rossoglou

Kostas Rossoglou holds the position of Senior Legal Officer at BEUC and is leading BEUC’s Digital Team. He has been working at BEUC’s Legal Department since January 2009 and his main areas of expertise are Intellectual Property, data protection and e-commerce. He is also working in the field of contract law and consumer redress. Kostas Rossoglou is a Greek qualified lawyer, member of the BAR of the Thessalonica, in Greece.

Konrad Boehmer

Konrad is a noted composer of orchestral, dramatic, chamber and electronic music and for 35-years a professor of composition and music history at the Royal Conservatory, The Hague. He has been active in the authors’ rights movement as a member of CIAM, the international body representing composer-members of authors societies worldwide for 40 years as well many years spent as the immediate past President of BUMA/Stemra, the authors’ society of the Netherlands. He brings an understanding of the changing creative process for composers over recent decades of dramatic technological development and an insiders view of how the digital age has affected the management of rights and what can be done to improve access to works for all whilst ensuring creators’ rights are respected.

Marianne Rollet

Marianne Rollet has more than 20 years in corporate communications, event organisation, media and public relations; A carer combining cultural issues and communication skills at the international level, for privately-held companies, international NGOs or in the public sector.
In October 2000, Marianne joined CISAC, an international organisation representing 232 authors’ societies in 121 countries. Since 2005, she is Director of Communications and of the World Copyright Summit. She is responsible for conceiving and implementing the international communications and event strategy of the NGO, targeting authors’ societies, creators of all repertoires, the entertainment sector and media, and the public at large. Her most successful achievement is the World Copyright Summit, a 2-day conference on the future of copyright and the creative industries in the digital era, held in Brussels (2007, 2011) and Washington (2009, 2013), gathering 700+ participants.
Marianne’s past experiences run from Communications Manager for Digital Distribution at FNAC, to Director of Conferences at Reed Midem and Head of the Press Department of the French Minister of Culture.

Robbert Baruch

Robbert Baruch (1967) is Manager Public Affairs at Buma/Stemra, the Dutch Collecting Society for authors rights. He studied Political Philosophy, Public Administration and Theology in Leiden, Amsterdam and Jerusalem. Prior to working at Buma/Stemra, Robbert was the senior lobbyist for the Dutch Insurance Industry and Alderman of the Rotterdam Borough of Feijenoord. Before that, he worked with ING Group as a political consultant.
He is an active member for the Dutch PvdA, where he was a board member, campaign leader and member of the provincial council. He is a board member of the Central Jewish Council of The Netherlands, the International Press Centre Nieuwspoort, and various other boards. He is a guest lecturer on Public Affairs and Political Philosophy at Leiden University and the Utrecht school of Journalism and keeps a web blog (in Dutch) on www.robbertbaruch.nl. And twitters under the alias @rbaruch

Paul Keller

Paul Keller copyright policy advisor and vice-chair of Knowledgeland, an Amsterdam based think-tank focussed on innovation in the knowledge economy.
Paul is an expert on open content and data licensing with a special focus on the cultural heritage organizations, the music industry and the creative industries. He is public project lead for Creative Commons in the Netherlands and serves as Collecting Societies Liaison for Creative Commons International. Paul is also coordinating the copyright related aspects of Images for the Future one of the biggest digitization projects for audio-visual heritage in Europe and he is one of the the architects of the licensing framework for Europeana, the European Union funded online aggregator of Europe’s cultural heritage.
Paul is member of the board of iCommons, an organisation promoting open education, access to knowledge, free software, open access publishing and free culture communities around the world. He also sits on the advisory board of the Virtual Platform, the sector institute of the Dutch eCulture sector and is a board member of the TransArtis a knowledge centre on cultural mobility, with a strong focus on artist-in-residence opportunities.

Kelvin Smits

As an economist and music artist, Kelvin Smits has always been a supporter of a fairer and clearer system of rights remuneration, although his personal experiences have shown him that this is often easier said than done. After 15 years of writing and producing more than 180 songs for different bands, he decided to start the first European digital-only label “The WAB”, which grew rapidly and became the hub for Belgian alternative music and is now an established name with more than 350 bands releasing their music worldwide online. The realization that many of these bands were not being paid the digital mechanical rights from iTunes by SABAM led directly to the foundation of Younison, the European advocacy organisation that gives authors a way to demand stringent transparency and accountability standards vis-a-vis their collecting societies.

Liv Vaisberg

Liv Vaisberg is a legal adviser to the Federation of European Publishers. She is of French and Dutch Nationality and hold a double law degree from King’s College London (LLM) and Paris-1 Université Panthéon Sorbonne (Master) as well as a L.L.M. in European Legal Studies from the College of Europe. Before joining FEP, she worked as a legal adviser at ARTE, the cultural Franco-German channel, and as a consultant specialised in copyright and cultural issues at EU level.

Mario Pena

Mario Pena (born 1972), Chief Business Development Officer at Safe Creative, is a former Computer technician, open culture and speech advocate, and photographer. Has given lectures at the MIT in Boston about online registries, at the Communia Event in Amsterdam together with V.P. of Creative Commons, and is a frecuent lecturer in other important events about copyright issues and digital content related business models, such as the Digital Content Distribution Workshop by Erich Pommer Institute, the Open Video Conference NY, the first Semantic Copyright conference or the Conference of Independent Journalism in the Complutense University of Madrid.
Has been speaker at the 2011 TEDx PlazaCibeles about education and open culture in the classroom. Former P.R. at International Film Festivals, CEO of Zync.es and chief of the research and development dept. at Sync.es. Online media business expert is very interested in the way new ways of licensing and the new challenges the digital paradigm brings to the economies of scarcity and abundance.

Jeremy Malcolm

Jeremy Malcolm is Consumers International’s Senior Policy Officer for Consumers in the Digital Age, coordinating its global programmes on Access to Knowledge (A2K), broadband, and consumer rights and representation in the information society from CI’s Asia-Pacific office in Kuala Lumpur. Jeremy graduated with degrees in Law (with Honours) and Commerce in 1995 from Murdoch University, and completed his PhD thesis at the same University in 2008 which was the first doctoral examination of the Internet Governance Forum.
Jeremy’s background is as an information technology and intellectual property lawyer and IT consultant. He is admitted to the bars of the Supreme Court of Western Australia (1995), High Court of Australia (1996) and Appellate Division of New York (2009). Until his most recent appointment Jeremy was the principal of Western Australia’s first specialist IT law firm, and simultaneously managed an IT consultancy.

David Hammerstein

David Hammerstein is the Senior Advisor on intellectual property for the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue in Brussels. As a Member of the European Parliament from 2004-2009, he specialized on IP, telecomunications and Internet issues. He is now following closely the Treaty to improve access to copyrighted works for people who are blind or have other disabilities at the World Intellectual Property Organization and ACTA, internet related policies and other issues related to global access to medicine.

Joe McNamee

Joe McNamee is Advocacy Coordinator for European Digital Rights (EDRi) – an association of 28 digital civil rights associations from 18 European countries. Prior to starting with EDRi, Joe worked for a political/telecoms consultancy, where he led three research projects for the European Commission (local loop unbundling, convergence and telecoms/information society in Russia and seven other former soviet states.

Elisabeth O. Sjaastad

Elisabeth O. Sjaastad (born in Oslo, Norway 1977) studied directing at the Beijing Film Academy and the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, China (1998-2000). While studying, she directed and co-produced a theatre production of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Good Woman of Setzuan” in Beijing .In 2002 she directed and produced the Amanda-nominated (Norway’s national film award) feature documentary Shiny Stars, Rusty Red (China) which was invited to film festivals worldwide, including Full Frame Documentary Festival, USA, and Pusan International Film Festival, Korea. Through her production company Screen Stories she has also produced films from South Africa (also as director), Peru and the United Arab Emirates.
Elisabeth was Vice President of the Norwegian Film Makers’ Association and a FERA delegate 2005 – 2010. She has served on several juries and boards. In 2006 she was appointed by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture as member of the Einarsson-committee, which produced a report on Norway’s audiovisual policy and made recommendations to restructure the Norwegian Film Institute and redefining the goals and ambitions of Norwegian film.
In her spare time Elisabeth is developing a docudrama TV-serial on James Joyce and Henrik Ibsen, writing a feature film script, and producing a documentary film on Iraq as co-owner of the production company Directors at Work. Elisabeth has been Chief Executive of FERA since 2010.

Burak Özgen

Burak Özgen is Senior Legal Advisor at GESAC (The European Grouping of Societies of Authors and Composers) where he deals with legal and policy aspects of collective management, content licensing and protection of copyright. Before joining GESAC he was a partner at Eurokent Consultancy in Brussels, and worked with private companies, NGOs and governmental organisations, mostly on copyright related matters. Prior to that, Burak worked at the Audiovisual and Media Policies Unit of the European Commission, EMI Music Publishing and TurquoiseArt Entertainment as legal counsel. He also took part in international projects such as “Fair Music Business Model” and “Music Rights in Southern Africa” as legal advisor and project coordinator respectively.
He holds an LL.M degree in European and International Law from the Ghent University, Belgium, where he is still a PhD researcher and stayed as a visiting fellow at the Columbia Law School for a short term where he gave a seminar course on ‘Current issues in music licensing’.

Barbara Szczepańska

Barbara Szczepańska is the Library and Information Services Manager at Hogan Lovells Warsaw office.
Optionally [Before joining Hogan Lovells in 2001 she worked in academic library, corporate library and European Court of Justice library. She received a master’s degree in Information & Library Science followed by postgraduates studies on social communication and media and copyright law.] She represents the Poznan Foundation of Scientific Libraries in the eIFL-IP programme as an country coordinator. In this capacity in 2011 she participated in WIPO SCCR meetings advocating for exception and limitations to copyright treaty for libraries.
She is also an active member of the Polish Librarians Association. She is a former member of the IFLA Copyright and Other Legal Matters Committee and the EBLIDA Expert Group of Information Law.

Stuart Hamilton

Dr. Stuart Hamilton is the Director of Policy and Advocacy at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). He gained his PhD in Library and Information Science from the Royal School of Library and Information Science in Copenhagen, Denmark where his research examined freedom of access to information on the Internet worldwide, and the ways in which libraries can overcome barriers such as censorship or the digital divide to ensure that library users receive the best possible access to online information resources.

He has lectured extensively around the world on his PhD subject and other intellectual freedom matters, and his findings have been published in print and online journals. In his position as Director of Policy and Advocacy, Dr. Hamilton co-ordinates the activities of IFLA’s FAIFE (Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression) and CLM (Copyright and other Legal Matters) Committees, as well as work relating to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and other IFLA global advocacy activities in the area of access to digital information.

On 17^th January, C4C invited a group of Irish and EU policy makers and their staff, and representatives from business, libraries and research institutions, licensing agencies and the music sector to the venerable Trinity College Library in Dublin to discuss copyright challenges from the perspective of libraries and research institutions.

The event, which was co-organised with Trinity College Library, started with a tour of the old library, where the participants saw a selection of the library’s treasures including the Book of Kells, and a rare first edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy. In addition to the public part of the library, the visit also included a “behind the scenes” tour of the conservation laboratory and the digitisation studio, which are not usually open to the public. This look at the inner workings of the library helped everyone understand the practical challenges that confront today’s libraries and archives as they seek to preserve the past and make it accessible digitally.

After the tour, a roundtable discussion took place with presentations on the practical impact of copyright for libraries and research institutions, with a special focus on orphan works – copyrighted works where one or more of the rightsholders are not known or cannot be located/contacted – and digital preservation. The moderator of the discussion was Jennefer Aston, an executive member of the International Association of Law Libraries and the owner of LawBooks Ireland.

Orphan Works

Toby Bainton, a senior policy adviser at Information Sans Frontières, started the discussion with a presentation on the orphan works problem in Europe. He noted that while libraries strive to digitise works lawfully, it is often difficult to know when a work is out of copyright. This is complicated by the fact that there are millions of orphan works in European libraries : e.g. scientific photographs, letters and little known novels. Though these works may have little or no commercial value, many of those works are of great interest and should be made available to the public as historical sources. For example, collection of children’s books from the 1930s can tell us a lot about the culture of the time. The proposed EU Directive on orphan works comes in two versions and they are not currently synced up. According to the proposed text, digitization will be lawful if a ‘diligent search’ for the rights holder was made. From the perspective of libraries, it is crucial that this process be automated as far as possible.

Georgina Bentliff, representing the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency, continued with a presentation on ARROW, the pan-European registry project for orphan works. ARROW is intended to join up the various databases throughout Europe that contain information on published books and their associated rights so one can find out who owns what and how to ask for permission to use it – automatically, if possible. In short, ARROW will essentially provide the due diligence part of the proposed Orphan Works directive. Currently being piloted in the UK, Germany and France, with feasibility studies in progress in a number of countries, including Ireland, it will work as follows (click here for a graphical representation of the process): a library will be able to interrogate the ARROW portal with regard to the rights relating to the digitization of a particular work. Behind the ARROW portal the request will be matched against the catalogue of The European Library, which receives feeds from the national libraries of all the countries involved in the project. In addition to that, the request will be matched against the VIAF (the international registry of authors) and the database of the Books-in-Print organization for the relevant country (presently Nielsen for the UK and Ireland). This will help to determine if the work is still ‘in commerce’. The database of the relevant reproduction rights organisation (RRO – ICLA in Ireland) will also be searched to see if any rightsholders (authors and publishers) can be identified. If none of these queries returns any rights holder information, the record will be included in the orphan works registry and what may subsequently be done with that work will depend upon the legal regime in each participating country. Authors and publishers will be encouraged to look through the registry and to use the ARROW system to claim any works which are theirs and not true orphans.

One of the participants noted that ARROW helps force subsidiary databases to clean up their records so that they can connect using ISNI and other standard identifiers. Another participant mentioned that an equivalent system to ARROW was being developed for music in Europe to help identify orphan recordings.

When will ARROW be operational across Europe? Georgina said that the current phase of the project (‘ARROW plus’), in which Ireland is participating, is due to run until September 2013. Beyond that, it is difficult to say because some countries do not as yet have their data organized in a way that allows them to participate. That’s why ARROW is helping a number of countries to create national registries of their works.

One of the participants asked Georgina whether the ARROW registry would be fully comprehensive, involving publications from around the world. Georgina responded that the scope was on European books for the moment. If successful it could be broadened to include publications other than books in the future, and other geographical areas.

A participant commented that the number of public domain books is much larger in the US than in Europe, because of the 1923 cut-off date in the US. The practical implication is that, for example, in the Google Books project, only books from before 1870 are fully viewable in Europe, whereas in the US books up to 1923 are accessible online. As a result, Google books launched with 1.5 million public domain books in the US and only 1 million in Europe. As for the digitisation of in-copyright works, it is essential to address the issues of orphan works and out of commerce works. There is a real risk that we will face a 20th century ‘black hole’ in Europe – a situation where all material from before 1900 is digitised and available online, but hardly anything from the 20th century.

Digital Preservation and Access

In his presentation, Yvo Volman, Deputy Head of the Access to Information unit at the European Commission focused on copyright issues around digital preservation and access to cultural works online. One of the major problems for digital preservation is that modern data carriers become technically obsolete within a very short timeframe: while clay tablets held up well, floppy disks are fragile and were only in use for little over 10 years. Many Member States are updating their legislation, but there are still problems. One key legal challenge for Europe is that in some countries, you can only make one or a very limited number of copies for archiving purposes which is not technically sufficient, making it very challenging to keep an archive up to date and make current records available for the future. Another problem is that very little can be done with all the material that is preserved. There is a real risk of an increasing number of so-called ‘dark archives’ – archives that can only be used in very limited circumstances or not at all.In an effort to provide a central, digital repository for Europe’s cultural heritage, the European Commission is promoting a platform called ‘ ‘Europeana’ which has more than 20 million objects in its collection at the moment. To highlight to importance of digital platforms like Europeana, Yvo showed an example of a handwritten letter by Napoleon found in a local Polish library. Thanks to Europeana, researchers and members from the general public can access a digitised version of the original letter from all over the world. An additional issue is that there are examples where public domain material is being monetized and access limited, simply because a scan or a photograph of the original material has been made which can create a ‘new’ copyright – not in the material being scanned but in the scanned image of it. Ireland has brought nice material into Europeana, but there is still a lot missing – including the Book of Kells – and there should be a concentrated effort for all major treasures to be available on Europeana.

In response to Yvo’s point about ‘dark archives’, a member of the audience noted the example of the Irish Historical Picture Company, an online service with out-of-copyright images that have watermarks unless you pay for them. One of the participants interjected that in the case of libraries the money collected from providing access to public domain material is used to pay for further preservation. If the material is free, how is the work to be paid for? One proposal was to have different models for different types of access. This way one could extract money from value added services associated with the content, e.g. a poster of a photograph, without locking up the content itself.

Susan Schreibman, Assistant Professor and researcher at Trinity College Dublin, closed the debate with a presentation on the practical challenges involved in digitisation projects and the potential of large digital data sets for research in the field of humanities. She highlighted that much of the early web material has been lost because it was stored in technologies that disappeared along with the materials it held. The context of the digital material, e.g. the web of links to online material, is just as important as the actual text. This is why Susan prefers the more inclusive concept of ‘digital curation’, including the preservation of context such as interactions, links and lexia, in addition to preserving the artifact. Memory institutions face further challenges, particularly in the area of curating the archives of contemporary writers and artists. Writers who are now donating their archives to cultural heritage institutions tend to provide material in various formats – from paper to hard drives, from floppy discs to recordings – which makes rights clearance complex. An increasingly important question is how today’s authors will consent to the preservation of their work as, over time, formats shift as institutions migrate content to contemporary formats. One of the most advanced large-scale digitisation projects is Google Books, which allows you to read one page at a time without the possibility to download the book. While this is probably not what Google intended they are limited by what copyright allows. Another example is the Hathi Trust: a collection of 2.5 million books created by a consortium of 40 libraries, many of which are Google Books partners. The Hathi Trust wants to make sure the digital record left behind by Google is maintained, preserved and curated. The Authors Guild is suing the Hathi Trust in the United States for copyright infringement and although the Trust does not welcome the suit, it will provide a helpful test in court to move policy on access forward. Susan finished her presentation by noting that flexible access to copyrighted material will be needed to drive more and new kinds of scholarship and research, especially as technology continues to advance.

Jennefer concluded the event and thanked the speakers and the organisers. A number of participants told us that they enjoyed the presentations and that the intimate, informal setting of the event facilitated a frank and open discussion. It was also mentioned that initiatives such as C4C provide a valuable forum to discuss copyright issues in a constructive manner among different stakeholders, something that is missing in other areas such as the music sector.

The next C4C events, this time with a focus on digital media and consumers, will take place in April at the European Parliament in Brussels.

Speakers’ bios

Toby Bainton

Mr Bainton spent the first part of his career working in university libraries, most recently as the director of the library of the University of Reading (60 km west of London). He then became (1995-2010) the chief executive of the association of UK and Irish university librarians, SCONUL. He is now senior policy adviser for Information Sans Frontieres, a group which works to promote favourable laws and policies for cultural institutions, especially in the European Parliament, the Commission, and the Council of Ministers.

C4C held a successful dinner event at the European Parliament in Brussels on June 14th. A total of 37 guests followed our invitation to discuss the needs of creators, archivists, and educators in transforming creative works and how the European copyright framework could be improved to meet their challenges. Participants included members of the European Parliament, the European Commission as well as representatives from libraries, right-holders, business and the academic community.

C4C coordinator Nick Ashton-Hart, who moderated the event, opened the evening by thanking MEP Eva Lichtenberger for hosting the event, and MEPs Helga Truepel and Mariejete Schaake for co-hosting. He further announced that he will hand over the coordinator role to his colleague Matthias Langenegger to focus more on other areas of his work.

Konrad Boehmer, composer and ex-president of the Dutch author’s society BUMA/Stemra, presented the composers’ perspective on copyright. He noted that there is widespread confusion between “copyright” and “author’s right”, even in official EU-documents, which has to be addressed. He further pointed out that creativity is a continuum, whereby elements of existing works are being re-used to create new ones. This is as true now as it was in the 18th century, where it was common to “sample”, “remix” and “cover” each other’s works. In Konrad’s words “every artist is a thief”, as he draws on the works of others to find inspiration. However, the current copyright regime slows down this innovation process as any use of a prior work requires a license to be concluded manually with rightsholders that are hard or impossible to find. To get the balance right again and to ensure that the legal regime is capable of dealing with the current challenges, Konrad called for the introduction of international, non-transferable authors’ rights limited to the author’s lifetime.

MEP Eva Lichtenberger noted that one of the problems is the lack of impartial studies. Policy makers are often confronted with biased studies which make it difficult for them to get a good understanding and offer sensible solutions to the problem. She further pointed out that during its last plenary session, the EP adopted a resolution on European Contract Law to improve the harmonization of national contract laws. With this resolution, the EP is asking for further research on cross-border contracts for artists which would be a step towards a truly common market for creative goods.

Martyn Ware, an internationally successful British musician and producer, followed up on Konrad’s presentation with a pragmatic analysis of the current state of copyright. He reinforced Konrad’s point about the innovation process and noted that copyright has not been able to keep up with the technology which has made digital sampling and remixing an essential part of the creative process. Martyn reminded the participants that the fundamental purpose of copyright was to enable creativity. However, he noted, we have gotten ourselves into a situation whereby copyright is perceived by many as a barrier to creation. According to Martyn, what we need is a global clearing house and rights management database, in addition to international copyright reform and harmonization. Martyn reinforced the importance of access to music for educational institutions on preferential terms – ideally, that accredited institutions should not have to pay for non-commercial uses of works as part of the education process.

In a follow-up on Martyn’s point about online file sharing, one of the participants noted that in the Netherlands, artists recently formed a coalition with consumers to speak out against the criminalization of their audience.

Wilma Mossink, an expert on copyright management for educational institutions highlighted the difficulties faced by universities and research institutions trying to use audiovisual content in e-learning material, especially in cases where only a part of a work is needed as this often requires special approval. The lack of exceptions for educational purposes prevents the use of different kind of multimedia materials in a innovative way and hampers the availability of other material than texts to students. This problem is even more important in the case of cross-border education because different rules apply in different countries.

Last but not least, Ben White from the British Library explained the problems faced by libraries and archives in their digital preservation efforts. Because the current copyright regime only includes exceptions and limitations as a non-mandatory option, a lot of EU Member States allow only one or two digital copies, which is problematic since digital preservation requires archivists to make several copies on different servers and in different formats as formats change in relatively short periods of time. In some member countries digital preservation is illegal, which creates a risk that works from those countries will not be available in digital format for future generations.

While most of the attendees seemed to agree that there is a need for international harmonization and copyright exemptions for archiving and learning material, some held that current copyright was sufficient to enable innovative online services and to meet the needs of libraries and learning institutions. One of the participants further noted that the real problem was plagiarism and stressed the importance for every work to be remunerated to enable further creation.

The friendly, informal setting of the event encouraged the participants to make comments and ask questions. We have been told by many, including some of the attending policy makers, that they enjoyed the evening and appreciated the thought-provoking discussions. It was also mentioned that one of the problems European policy makers face in this area is that there is no venue for direct contact with artists, an opportunity which this event was able to provide.

Similar events are scheduled to take place later this year and early 2012 in Ireland, Spain, Germany and France.

Speakers’ Bios

Martyn Ware

Martyn Ware was a founding member of the internationally successful pop bands the Human League and Heaven 17 and a producer of multi-million-selling worldwide hit recordings for Tina Turner, Terence Trent D’Arby, Chaka Khan, Erasure, Marc Almond and Mavis Staples amongst many others. He also lectures extensively on music production, technology and creativity and creates cutting edge three-dimensional sound and light-based multimedia installations in collaboration with other creators. He brings an understanding of how performers, composers, and digital artists collaborate in digital media and the inherent needs they have to reuse and transform creative works of other as a part of that process.

Konrad Boehmer

Konrad is a noted composer of orchestral, dramatic, chamber and electronic music and for 35-years a professor of composition and music history at the Royal Conservatory, The Hague. He has been active in the authors’ rights movement as a member of CIAM, the international body representing composer-members of authors societies worldwide for 40 years as well many years spent as the immediate past President of BUMA/Stemra, the authors’ society of the Netherlands. He brings an understanding of the changing creative process for composers over recent decades of dramatic technological development and an insiders view of how the digital age has affected the management of rights and what can be done to improve access to works for all whilst ensuring creators’ rights are respected.

Ben White

Benjamin White is the Head of Intellectual Property at the British Library. He has a background in publishing having worked for Pearson Education internationally, as well as for Ordnance Survey, the national mapping agency of the United Kingdom. He is active in the Intellectual Property field within the UK having sat on a number of bodies including the BBC’s Creative Archive Advisory Board, the UK Government’s Creative Economy Programme (Competition and Intellectual Property), i2010 Digital Libraries Programme, CBI Intellectual Property Board as well as the Institute of Public Policy Research’s Advisory Board on Intellectual Property and the Public Sphere. He currently chairs the copyright group of the Council for European National Librarians and sits on the UK Intellectual Property Office’s Copyright Research Expert Advisory Group.

Wilma Mossink

Wilma Mossink is the legal advisor of SURFfoundation. Her expertise is in copyright management in higher education. She initiated the Zwolle conferences and undertakes work for the Dutch community of practise DiRECt?(Digital Rights Expertise Community).She was project manager for two work packages in the SURF-JISC collaboration on copyright: Publishing agreements, institutional copyright policies and institutional repositories: bringing the Zwolle agenda to fruition. Wilma developed the Copyrighttoolbox of which the Licence to publish forms an important part. Another part of her work are the legal aspects of open access. She also drafts and comments on licences for use of content and software.Furthermore, Wilma advises the legal committee of the FOBID, the Dutch umbrella organisation of libraries. In this capacity, she represents the Netherlands in the Copyright Expert Group of EBLIDA, the European organisation for libraries. She is an expert resource person of the Copyright and Legal matters committee of IFLA (CLM) and is its information co-coordinator.Wilma Mossink regularly gives presentations nationally and internationally about the position of libraries in the information society, the legal aspects of open access, institutional repositories and the changing relationships of authors, institutions of higher education and publishers because of new technologies.