PIJIP Panel at Creative Commons Global Summit: Mapping Copyright Exceptions
On September 22, PIJIP hosted the panel on Mapping the World of Limitations and Exceptions in Copyright Law. The event was moderated by Andrés Izquierdo, PIJIP's Senior Research Analyst for the Arcadia project on the Right to Research in International Copyright.
Dalhousie University Professor Lucie Guibault presented her paper Copyright's Impact on Data Mining in Academic Research, which she co-authored with Christian Handke and Joan-Josep Vallbé. The paper analyses copyright law in group of countries to determine whether academic researchers need consent from rightholders before datamining a work. The dataset covers both legislated law and case law from 1990 to present. Guibault et. al. find that scholars publish fewer works that rely on datamining techniques in countries where researchers must obtain rightholder consent.
Andrés Izquierdo presented PIJIP's work-in-progress mapping copyright exceptions. The project, led by Prof. Sean Flynn analyzes whether each country's exceptions relevant to text- and data mining permit the reproduction and sharing of works for TDM purposes, and whether there are restrictions on one or both of these uses. PIJIP ranks countries on a six point scale from "Open to Research, Reproduction + Sharing", to "Private Use Not Open to TDM". We also discuss the different ways that the scope of these exceptions are limited. for instance, the exception in France is limited to scientific works, and Germany does not allow scientific uses.
Teresa Nobre described the Communia Association's review of copyright limitations and exceptions, which is designed for users of works such as educators and researchers, rather than for legal experts. The information is made available at https://copyrightexceptions.eu/. Nobre stressed that it is important to highlight the details of each copyright exception, rather than just ranking exceptions and color-coding them on a map. Communia dissects each one, looking the purpose behind it, the acts of use that are permissible, the categories of works that are applicable, and whether a use is subject to required compensation, an attribution requirement, or the three step test.
Patricia Diaz presented the Datysoc / Karisma database of flexibilities in ten Latin American countries - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. The review is online at https://flexibilidades.datysoc.org/, and it includes an interactive map where one can look up legal language by country or by type of exception. Datysoc will work to expand the database in the coming year, and they will be monitoring countries that are debating copyright reform.
Caterina Sganga and Guilia Priora presented early work from ReCreating Europe - an EU-funded project to study how digital copyright law can be reframed to allow fairer access to knowledge. Part of this review is a mapping of copyright flexibilities that focuses on end users, access to culture, and the protection of vulnerable groups. The full Recreating Europe database will be available in 2022. Early results have shown where European copyright laws lack harmonization. There is no common understanding of what constitutes "research" under law, quotation rights mean different things in different countries, and a multitude of unharmonized legal concepts shape research flexibilities.