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Abstract:
The Internet has changed the ways in which we create, disseminate, access, and re-use information, knowledge, and entertainment. In many respects, digital media has enabled us to become more creative and interactive, to write and publish our own stories without owning a printing press (weblogs), to broadcast our own radio shows without requiring access to a broadcast studio (podcasts), to make and distribute songs or video clips without depending on recording studios or big Hollywood. In this short essay, we first provide several examples to demonstrate that the law - especially copyright law - has not kept pace with the unfolding creative revolution of cyberspace. We then argue that the law should strike a new balance between the divergent interests of various stakeholders in order to foster participatory culture. Finally, we outline some approaches and proposals that might contribute to such an endeavor.

Participatory culture, semiotic democracy, copyright law

Abstract:
This report provides a set of recommendations for transposing the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) into the national copyright frameworks of accession states and candidate countries. The guide, which is based on a peer-produced compilation and comparison of existing implementations of the EUCD across Europe, could also inform future law reform in existing member states.

The report focuses on digital copyright issues and suggests principles aimed at establishing best practices with regard to user autonomy and peer collaboration, diversity, and political and cultural participation. The study includes specific recommendations in controversial areas such as DRM anti-circumvention frameworks, private copying exceptions, teaching exceptions, exceptions for disabled people, exceptions for archives and libraries, as well as recommendations on issues such as reporting on current events, the quotation right, and provisions on caricature and parody, among others.

copyright, EUCD, anti-circumvention legislation, copyright exceptions, privatecopying, best practice

Abstract:
The paper seeks to explore the implementation of the EU Copyright Directive (EUCD) provisions on research and teaching in selected Member States using a fictitious case study of a professor who scans parts of a textbook, copies some digital articles, uploads them to the university's web server and gives passwords to the students enrolled in his class. After a rough clustering of country-specific implementations, the permissibility of the uses made in the case scenario is explored under five representative jurisdictions: Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Malta, and Slovenia. Finally, the authors raise a couple of policy questions that emanate from the previous analysis.

European Copyright Directive, Education, eLearning, Comparative law