Digital Rights Network

Michelle Childs of CPTech has posted a summary of a presentation by Leonardo Cervera Nava (LCN) an Administrator in the Copyright and Knowledge-based Economy section of DG Internal Market. Of specific interest was the following info about their scheduled review of the copyright and term directives:

"... First in relation to the Commission's review of the Copyright Directive, due this year. Originally it was to be a review only of implementation, but now it will be an evaluation review of the Directive i.e an evaluation of whether or not has it achieved its policy objectives. This is an important change. ....

CN confirmed that they would adopt the same approach to the evaluation of the Copyright Directive. Initial signs are encouraging, as the terms of the tender for the initial evaluation are broad: the study must include a review of the contribution of copyright to knowledge economy, the role of consumers, the way Member States have transposed exceptions and limitations in the Directive into national legislation ( an increasingly controversial issue as the current disputes in France over their implementation of the Copyright Directive show .) It will also look at technical protecion measures (TPMs) and generally any difficulties that arise for right holders, commercial users, consumers ,scientific and academic users and libraries

The initial evaluation will be undertaken by Professor Bernt Hugenholtz, a well known expert in this area, who has written extensively on the Directive, including some of the problems with it.

LCN also discussed two other Commission initiatives. First the proposal to review the Term Directive , in the face of industry pressure to extend the term of copyright protection. DG Internal Market will provide an impact assessment at the end of the year."