EU Copyright Directive Part 3

[Articles] Developing European Legal Information Markets based on Government Information
Leith, P.
International Journal of Law & Information Technology
Volume 12, Number 3, Autumn 2004

This article examines the Directive on re-use of public sector information³ in light of an EU funded project under the eContent programme (ADD-WIJZER⁴). In outline, the Directive will allow commercial (and other) information providers low cost access to government copyrighted works. Copyright will remain with the relevant government but it will not normally be able to prevent re-use of this material through exclusive licences etc. The aim of the Directive is to increase the production of information products and thus help develop the information marketplace in Europe. Such a legal information marketplace would be expected to have a customer base wider than that of the legal profession. The research in this article⁵ represents a series of interviews with a representative sample of those who might be expected to be part of a growing ‘legal information marketplace’ and what might be the ‘added value’ which commercial suppliers of legal information might provide to attract them to these envisaged products.

Importantly, we start from the position that in order to compete successfully in the marketplace it will be necessary for information providers to understand how the legal market place utilises legal information at present and what users perceive as being of potential ‘added value’. We will briefly use the conceptual structure of the ‘technology acceptance model’⁶ to analyse our interview material.

We will also note that a tension exists between the private and public sector over the dissemination of public sector information and that the Directive needed to resolve several issues if the eContent programme of the information society is to succeed. Such issues include: accessrights, copyright, competition rules and pricing policies. These have not been attacked in the Directive and we thus feel that it in comparison to the Proposal for a Directive offers little to either the public or to commercial re-users of information that is not already on offer at present. The Directive is, perhaps, a failed project in terms of the ultimate aims of the Information Society.

Technological Protection Measures in the United States, the European Union and Germany: How Much Fair Use Do We Need in the “Digital World” ?
Wencke Basler
Virginia Journal of Law & Technology
Volume 8, Issue 3, Fall 2003

As digital technological advances have created new opportunities for exploiting copyrighted works, governments worldwide have sought to recalibrate the balance between preserving the protection copyright holders deserve while maintaining the proper degree of access for “fair users.” The WIPO Copyright Treaty (“WCT” ), which devised new legal measures for achieving this balance, has been implemented in the United States through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and in several Member States in the European Union through the EU Copyright Directive . Because differences exist in how the United States and EU Member States, particularly Germany, have implemented the WCT, an examination of these systems reveals some advantages and disadvantages that point toward a refined balance between copyright protection and Fair Use . While both the U.S. and EU/German systems prohibit the circumvention of, and the trafficking in, access control devices, the United States regime does not prohibit the circumvention of copy control devices. Consequently, U.S. users who can circumvent a copy control device without trafficking in such devices may make fair use of the copyrighted material. The EU/German system does not permit the user to circumvent the copy control devices in any respect, but it does require the copyright holder to provide the user, in exchange for compensation, with the means to bypass the copy control devices and make fair use of the copyrighted material. This requirement, which expands the degree to which copyrighted material is made more accessible for fair use, gives the EU/German system a decided advantage over the U.S. regime, though the EU/German system has drawbacks that impair its effectiveness.

THE EUROPEAN UNION INTERNET COPYRIGHT DIRECTIVE AS EVEN MORE THAN IT ENVISIONS: TOWARD A SUPRA-EU HARMONIZATION OF COPYRIGHT POLICY AND THEORY
Boston College International and Comparative Law Review
Volume 26, Number 2, Spring 2003 p.415

Implementations in the UK of EU Directive 29/2001 on Copyright part 1: Consulting the experts, raising awareness, identifying the main issues, and the consultation process
Graham Coult
Legal Information Management
Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2003 p.15-24

Author: international

Mentioned in these Entries

EU Copyright Directive, Fair Use.