EUCD Review and Implementation

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EUCD Review and Implementation Wiki

Purpose

Currently, the EU Directive on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (EUCD) is subject to a comprehensive and official review process. In preparation for a working session on the EUCD at the “Wizards of OS 4 – Information Freedom Rules” (WOS 4), a network of European copyright experts from civil society seeks to contribute to the stock-taking exercise and initiate a complementary and collaborative assessment of the EUCD. The outcome of this exercise will be a best-practice guide to EUCD implementation.

This initiative aims to:

  1. Guide governments working to implement the EUCD as well as public interest copyright experts working to influence those governments. Target countries include Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Southeast European countries, but also countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
  2. Guide EU member states who are considering, today or in the future, copyright law reform.
  3. Provide a platform for networking and knowledge exchange between Western and Eastern/Southeastern European copyright experts.
  4. Serve as a resource guide for the EUCD workshop at WOS 2006, which will examine whether the directive achieved its goals. Has it hampered legitimate uses? Where there are flexibilities in the EUCD, which of the national implementations are better for freedom than others? Does it create unnecessary restrictions compared to the WCT that it transposes? Are there implementations of the WCT in countries outside the European Union that have found better solutions than the EUCD?

Deliverables

In a first phase, contributors from various EU countries will provide a description of the ways in which the relevant provisions of the EUCD have been transposed into national law. This collection of materials – made available to the public on this Wiki – shall serve as a shared resource for all stakeholders as well as policy-makers who have an interest in exploring alternative designs of national copyright regimes within the framework established by the EUCD. In addition to providing materials, the national experts might decide (and are encouraged) to offer annotations, general comments, comparative analyses, specific critiques, or even comprehensive assessments of the respective national implementations of the EUCD. Non-EU country experts will also post information about respective national copyright laws and implementation processes

In a second phase, a smaller group of experts will take the materials and comments as the basis for a report that seeks to identify and map the alternative design choices, evaluate them against the backdrop of the core values of today’s information society, and to formulate annotated principles that shall form the foundation of a “best practice” guide addressed to states working towards EU membership in south-eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia who are required to transpose the EUCD as well as to member states who are considering, today or in the future, copyright law reform.

The report will be ready for the Wizards of OS 4 on 14 - 16 September 2006 where a panel and a workshop will take place.

Preceding Work

  • Euro-copyrights.org by a pan-European network of young copyright scholars, striving to educate as many people as possible about the implementation of the European Copyright Directive and copyright laws on an objective and easy to understand way.
  • Link Collection by the Institut für Urheber- und Medienrecht Munich (in German / Stand vom 12. Juli 2004).

Other Resources

Collection of National Copyright Laws


Background Materials on EUCD and National Copyright Laws


Copyright Exceptions


Specific Issues/Areas of Implementation

(a) Technological Protection Measures

  • Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts, Project on anti-circumvention of technological protection of copyrighted works, Final Report Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts, Volume 27, No. 4.
  • EFF submission to WIPO on TPMs

(b) Teaching and Research Exceptions

(c) Political and Cultural Exceptions

  • P. Bernt Hugenholtz, Copyright and Freedom of Expression in Europe, in Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss, Diane Leenheer Zimmerman & Harry First (eds.), Expanding the Boundaries of Intellectual Property. Innovation Policy for the Knowledge Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2001). Available here


European Commission


Reports from other Jurisdictions

  • EFF submission to the Gowers review of UK copyright law

25 current EU members

Acceding Countries

Candidate Countries

Potential Candidate Countries

Countries outside the EU implementing the WCT/WPPT

Project Leads

Contributors

  • Patricia Akester
  • Maja Bogataj
  • Daniel Boos
  • Silke Ernst
  • Stefan Gavrilescu
  • Johanna Gibson
  • Andrea Glorioso
  • Teresa Hackett
  • Daniel Haeusermann
  • Janet Hawtin
  • Joris Van Hoboken
  • Iryna Kuchma
  • Svetozara Petkova
  • Achal Prabhala
  • Judit Rius Sanjuan
  • James Thurman
  • [Please add your name if you have contributed, but are not on this list yet. Thanks!]

Best Practice Guide

Best Practice Guide Page


A PDF version of the Guide edited by Urs Gasser & Silke Ernst is available at Harvard Law School and at the Forschungsstelle für Informationsrecht an der Universität St. Gallen.

Support

This research was supported by the Open Society Institute's Information Program


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