New KR21 research and study: Copyright as an Access Right
In June 2024, the Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) network and Communia, published research findings in a publication entitled Copyright as an Access Right: Concretizing Positive Obligations for Rightholders to Ensure the Exercise of User Rights, which was authored by professors Christophe Geiger and Bernd Justin Jütte.
Access to information is crucial for cultural and artistic creativity and scientific innovation. Without access to prior creations, further creativity and innovation are prevented. Providing access to these creative works requires a careful balancing of the interests of creators and producers of information and publishers on the one side, and users of that information on the other. In addition, the public interest in promoting cultural and scientific progress must be considered, which is supported by the fundamental rights and sustainability objectives included in the EU Treaties. This study explores what positive obligations arising directly from the status of exceptions and limitations should be imposed on rightholders as a consequence of the rights enjoyed by users under copyright law, particularly in light of the fundamental rights they reflect. The authors believe that it is necessary to ensure that access to copyrighted works is possible under fair and reasonable conditions, especially when it is a prerequisite for the exercise of exceptions and limitations. As a consequence, they propose that exceptions and limitations reflecting fundamental rights become mandatory and that prohibitions on contractual override are applied horizontally. You can read more about the study at the following link.
KR21 has already issued and published several publications in the past, which we have already reported on and we invite you to read again:
ODIPI is organizing ERA KR21 Conference: Barriers and Incentives for Open Science in the Copyright Law that will take place on 2 December, 2024 at Hotel Four Points by Sheraton (Mons) in Ljubljana and also online.
The District Court of Hamburg ruled in the case of Kneschke v. LAION e.V. that LAION did not infringe the copyright of photographer Kneschke, as the use of his photograph was covered by the exception for text and data mining (TDM) for scientific purposes.
“Can copyright bring artificial intelligence to its knees? Which other circumstances may cause that the “making” of generative AI can dramatically change in the (near) future. This short paper presents potential challenges that copyright poses to the training of the machines on large amount of data. Different jurisdictions address these issues differently. In the USA the legality of these activities is tested in several court cases. Do gentlemen’s agreements and pragmatic symbiosis known from the “search engines business model” provide sufficient basis and/or incentive for the business model of “making” generative AI business model as well?