"EU Research Committee Wants to Gift Publishers New Rights to Restrict Access to Scientific Research"

COMMUNIA has released "EU Research Committee Wants to Gift Publishers New Rights to Restrict Access to Scientific Research."

Here's an excerpt:

Last week the Culture and Education Committee (CULT) and the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) voted on their final opinions on the Commission’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. . . .

The introduction of a new right for press publishers (aka the “link tax”) to extract fees from search engines for incorporating short snippets of—or even linking to—their content in article 11 is one of the most controversial issues of the proposed directive. Adopting this type of ancillary right at the EU level would have a strong negative impact on all stakeholders, including publishers, authors, journalists, researchers, online service providers, and readers. . . .

In the votes last week in the CULT and ITRE committees, the press publishers right was also carried through – and even expanded. Both of the recent opinions remove the restriction that the right applies to digital uses only, meaning that if adopted it would cover all uses—both digital and in print. Even worse, ITRE—the committee responsible for policy relating to the promotion of research—voted to extend the press publishers right to cover scientific publications.

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Author: Charles W. Bailey, Jr.

Charles W. Bailey, Jr.