European copyright for the digital age – WS 06 2014

13 June 2014 | 11:30-13:00
Programme overview 2014

Session subject

Copyright, open access

Session description

National and EU law is full of copyright restrictions hampering open access on science, culture and other – even public – sources. There are plenty of initiatives and projects across Europe (and abroad) to challenge and overcome such restrictions and to promote open access in various fields. On the other hand, there is a well organized and powerful content and rightholder industry preventing overdue copyright reforms for the digital age. Progress into this direction is still on a snail pace by and struggling over stumbling blocks. This WS will outline and discuss related concepts and initiatives for a European copyright approach fit for the digital age. see also discussion.

People

• Focal point: Mathias Schindler, Wikimedia Germany
• Live moderator: tbd
• Rapporteur: Lorena
• Remote participation moderator: Sorina Teleanu
• Digital facilitator: Lorena
• Panelists/speakers:
• Konstantinos Komaitis (ISOC)
• Ellen Broad (IFLA)
• Mathias Schindler (Wikimedia)
• Guido Jansen (Bibliotheksverband, German Association of Librarians)

Format of this working group at EuroDIG

Workshop

Protocol. Discussions

See the discussion

Further reading

• EU copyright approaches for the digital age.

• Fulfill the promise of the Innovation Union

• GLAM

• IFLA -- Libraries and Archives write letter to the European Union

• IFLA -- IFLA advocates for copyright treaty for libraries and archives in Geneva

• IFLA -- EU rejects international solution to library and archive copyright problems; causes collapse of WIPO meeting

• The Public Domain Manifesto (Communia project)

• Communia network

• Article 19 -- The Right to Share: Principles on Freedom of Expression and Copyright in the Digital Age

• Music copyright in the digital age

• European copyright law

• Differences in EU Copyright Implementation

• Copyright in the digital age

• BBC on Copyright for the digital age

• “Copyright Law is Outdated.” An Interview with Till Kreutzer

• European Cultural Heritage – Europeana

• Europeana libraries

• More on Europeana (Wikipedia)

• Commons (Wikipedia)

• On the Commons

• Creative Commons

• Interview with Lawrence Lessig on CC

• What about Orphan works

• EU Directive on orphan works

• IPO -- Copyright works: seeking the lost

• The European Orphan Works Directive - an EIFL Guide

Messages

Reporter: Lorena Jaume-Palasí, Ludwig Maximilians University / IGF-D Youth forum

1. The intended purpose and the current function of copyright laws need to be reconsidered.
2. Copyright laws permit different usages online and offline. Considering the current digital reality, the same rights that apply offline should also apply online.
3. Multistakeholder dialogue and collaboration to elaborate on new alternative copyright regulation is mostly encouraged

Video Record

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxNLK0RRbp8

Transcript

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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome. This is Workshop 6 “European Copyright for the Digital Age”. My name is Konstantinos Komaitis and I am a policy advisor with the Internet Society.

We are all gathered here today to discuss one – possibly one of the less least controversial issues of our time and that’s copyright. Before I let our panelists introduce themselves, I would like to ask you just in one word – the first word that comes in – to share the first word that comes into your heads when you hear copyright in the Digital Age. Yes, please, thanks, Ellen. Actually you don’t need a microphone. Just shout.

>> Confusion.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Enforcement. Creativity. Pirate. Good. Piracy. Authors. Remuneration. Fair use. Anyone else? Anything else? Uncertainty.

That’s great. So it’s very interesting to hear that no one thought of users. But it’s okay. We are going to try to put users into the equation and start talking about it. As you all know and some people have already expressed that Copyright Law is a very complex regime that it has become even more complex because of the Internet because of the nature of the Internet and the way the Internet works.

Even though the topic of our discussion today is Europe Copyright Law, I would like us to start by focusing onto Europe but then progressively move on to expand it a little bit and think of Copyright Law as one of those core elements that needs to be addressed and we need to start answering the questions that have been posted for oh so many years because currently the debate is highly fragmented. The discussions are not moving forward. And because of this status quo, we find ourselves in a position where technology is at stake, innovation is at stake, the rights of creators and authors are at stake, the rights of users are being questioned.

So we really need to start finding innovative ways and creative ways since we’re talking about copyright to move a little bit past that.

I will try to put this discussion a little bit into context and then I will turn to the panelists and I ask them to introduce themselves, as I said.

So generally speaking and anyone who is in law and Copyright Law in particular knows there are two main pillars to copyright justification, namely the creator incentivization as a means of ensuring public access as well as the creator reward.

So we all know that copyright and we have come to realize how important copyright is in our societies. And how important copyright has been in progressing various values including that of knowledge and science.

So the idea that we don’t need copyright is really not valid. And I would like us, at least for this – for the next hour and a half, to start on this basis, that we need copyright. And we need copyright and we need to find a way to address the various issues that have emerged because of the Internet.

One of the other things, however, that we are increasingly becoming aware of is that copyright needs to change. Its legal infrastructure needs to change. And it needs to adapt to a new reality. And that new reality is the Internet. The Internet is here to stay. It’s not going to go away. And the sooner we realize that, the better it will be for our discussions on copyright.

So someone said it here. There’s a certain degree of uncertainty in how copyright operates when it comes to the Internet. And that generally it has been evidenced that it has a spillover effect on innovation and entrepreneurship in general entrepreneurship. There is academic literature – can you please close the door. Thank you.

There is academic literature that actually suggests that right now there are – it’s very difficult to get funding on business models and ideas that have copyright – that may have copyright implications, so music streaming or video streaming, et cetera.

So we are faced with an outdating system that is trying very hard to integrate itself into a highly disruptive technology. And that is the Internet.

However, we have come to realize a lot of things, as well. We have come to realize that despite the disruptive nature of the Internet, copyright is also able to provide a lot of answers. And it’s also able to help newcomers in establishing themselves. And incentivize them in order to create those new ideas.

Now, the debate is taking place globally and it’s taking place regionally as well as nationally. In Europe the debate has been taking place for many, many years occasionally not as strong as in the – at the other side of the Atlantic. In the U.S. we still haven’t. Even also in Europe some laws that a lot of people have been questioning like SOAP (phonetic) and PEPA in the United States.

However, what we have seen in Europe is a more active participation by the users. ACTA the European citizens who were willing to take on the streets to protect what they felt was in jeopardy, that ACTA actually failed as an international treaty.

So the European Union has opened up the Commission – I’m sorry; the European Commission opened up a consultation some months ago. There was an overwhelming amount of submissions to that consultation. All our three panelists have submitted comments to that effect.

So there is a very strong dialogue taking place in Europe. And this dialogue is a great opportunity to start figuring out some of the details that have been in the back of our heads, have been debated, have been highly discussed. And try to figure out how best we can harmonize Copyright Law throughout Europe.

So I will stop talking but this is certainly not about me. It’s about you guys. And I will start with Guido. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what – how the German libraries are seeing the copyright discussions and how you feel about it.

>> GUIDO JANSEN: Thank you, good morning, everybody. My name is Guido Jansen. I’m from the German Library Association. I’m responsible for international cooperation there. I have to add on a side note I only learned this morning that I’m on this panel so I’m not trying to be very creative I just prepared these comprehensive notes to tell you a little bit about the point of view of libraries as one group of users in a way around copyright and digital content.

I think what many people don’t seem to know what many people also aren’t aware of on the political level is that libraries actually when it comes to digital content and ICTs are early adopter libraries at a very early stage have provided access to multimedia. They have organized workshops and trainings for users. And libraries still, to this very day, constitute for many, many people in Europe the only point of access to the Internet.

Now, this is a role that libraries are very aware of. And recently published trend report from the IFLA from the world Library Association highlighted that this function of libraries, the functional – particularly when it comes to providing information skills and ensuring information literacy.

What does this have to do with copyright? The problem for libraries is that the copyright in many countries with regard to print media has been very well regulated. The role of libraries has been regulated. And there is an agreed consensus and an agreed I would say compromise between the interests of rights holders and the interest of users and user groups such as libraries. For digital content this has not happened and that means for instance in Germany publishers can decide whether or not they want to grant libraries the right to license eBooks and to get eBooks.

For this reason, the European Library Association and an organization called EBLIDA has launched a campaign recently called the right to e read which tries to lobby for an international at least European wide regulation around access to eBooks for libraries, which doesn’t mean that libraries want digital content for free, certainly not. It also doesn’t mean one library in Germany buys one eBook and all German citizens can somehow download it or something. But it means that there should be a framework which enables libraries as access points for many, many people to provide eBooks and digital content in the same way that libraries have for decades provided print content I’ll stop here because I think my colleague from the international federation of libraries associations will have something to say on that.

>> ELLEN BROAD: Thank you very much Guido for those who haven’t met me I’m Ellen Broad I’m the manager for digital projects for the international federation of libraries and associations I’ll expand my comments a little bit more than libraries today so it’s not a completely library centric panel although there are other panels I love in my past job I ran an NGO in Australia called the Australian digital alliance that provided copyright expertise to not only the Australian Government but in the Pacific regions I can expand into other user groups and creators we represented I’m actually just going to base my opening comments kind of responding to some of the words that we heard in the first five minutes of this panel because I think they really articulate the wide reach of copyright at the moment. And the many issues and opportunities that are ahead of us.

The first that I wanted to pick up on creators because increasingly what I’m seeing in the European context particularly because I know a number of have now seen the draft impact assessment that was released through Statewatch, I see increasingly creators being lost in the copyright equation. In the European copyright consultation, for example, there is an increasing focus on distributors. We’ve seen the Internet tree that was released by dgMarket and at the base of that tree are the distributors so it’s all about facilitating that global copyright exchange. It’s all about licensing. It’s all about distribution.

But what I fear for are the original intended beneficiaries of copyright which are the creators.

To give you just one example and admittedly this is from a library perspective but we are also creators of content, the Internet does not – it offers as many challenges for individual creators as it does opportunities. It is an extremely effective distribution network. But almost impossible to police as an individual creator where there is infringement of your work even where there are mechanisms in place in the copyright regime for that to be enforced and to give you just one example, it’s quite common if you’re a blogger or if you’re an academic and you have an online web presence to find your content being scraped and added to other notetaking sites where quite often it can be republished as CC by or open domain, public domain I should say or CC0. We had an issue where we found 627 instances of content having been added to a public domain Web site in compliance with the take down and notice scheme that was in jurisdiction we could fill out online forms to have that content taken down but we had to fill out 627 forms to have each of those URLs removed and they were extremely caudial (phonetic) the Web site they explained to us. This was the way in which the content could be taken down but for the reality for individual creators you’re dealing with a system that enables the endless refacilitators of that content throughout cyberspace so I don’t know how we’re going to address that but I wonder if that’s something we’ll talk about today.

Very quickly enforcement is something that I think we’ll also – will also be very interesting coming up. Libraries and archives we’re currently at WIPO advocating for an international treaty that preserves copyright exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives. The European Union is strongly against any exceptions and limitations in this space. However, when we go to enforcement, quite often we move with enforcement as something that is unquestioned as compared with access. Which I think is should be as equally profound and necessary. So there’s a broadcasting treaty being negotiated at WIPO that would be unprecedented in the level of rights. It gives rights holders but the nature of that work is not questioned as much as exceptions and limitations.

The third is fair use or flexibility. A part of the European copyright consultation will be whether it’s time to adopt an open ended exception I gather fair use is definitely not palatable to many within the European Commission but I do think we will talk about commissionless innovation and why that’s important.

I might stop there because that was just the original thought.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you, Ellen, Mathias.

>> MATHIAS SCHINDLER: Good morning, my name is Mathias Schindler I’m a Project Manager at Wikimedia Germany. Our organization is working from Berlin in order to promote the integration and dissemination of freely licensed content including Wikipedia.

I work in the politics and society department. So we are dealing with topics including copyright, participation in the consultation. The last two larger discussions we are engaged with are the often works discussion in Europe and discussions about the Public Sector information directive which also had a big chunk of copyright implications.

Depending on the demographic and the protections where people come from to various workshops, I sometimes try to remember people as Wikipedia is according to more or less reliable statistics, a place where roughly 20 million people have contributed to.

So if Wikipedia is seen as a stakeholder, it could fall into the stakeholder group of offers rather than distributors.

But in some cases the distinction is – it doesn’t really matter about the categorization anymore.

However, Wikipedia has one big disadvantage. And that one is its aim to comply with Copyright Law. If we do so, it creates a huge overhead in compliance and research effort. And it means that a large chunk of content will never be able to be used on Wikipedia because of the legal uncertainty involved in the inability to check licenses and to check copyright status for large sale of works.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you Mathias and thank you, all. So I want to take something that you said and you talked a lot about regulation and the impact that regulation is having. And the way we have been approaching copyright is essentially an extension of what we have always been doing. We have been going through very hard regulatory regimes. And we have tried to figure out everything that we can about copyright and how to prevent things from happening and everything. And this obviously is not really working, especially now because of the Internet.

So I would like to ask before I step in Europe and ask you what the current state of copyright, what do you think the current state of Copyright Law is in Europe, whether we need to also start towards different means of regulation and by that I mean more self regulatory initiatives. We see them already happening we see them very strongly happening in the United States, in the UK, also we have voluntary initiatives that are emerging.

So do you believe that it is partly the state that we are right now is also partly because of the fact that we have not been able to figure out innovative forms of regulation for copyright and we have just followed the path that we always have followed?

>> GUIDO JANSEN: Should I first go with that. I think fragmentation again is the word that comes to mind that has been also mentioned here. And obviously we do have a lot of different approaches in different European countries. And the question now is to which extent can we keep that diversity because some models may work well in some countries and some may not work so well in others. And I know for instance that some countries did not partake in this campaign that I just mentioned for the right to have eBooks in libraries for some sort of like state regulation, some law to enshrine this right for libraries because they said we have found models in our country which really worked well. We actually discussed with publishers and publisher associations and we came up with a model where publishers can choose between three different say types of licenses for libraries and they themselves can determine into which type of license they want to put their titles and that then determines the conditions.

And people in those countries then basically said well if we now start talking about a state regulation and even on a European level, that would actually imperil what we have already reached so I think from my point of view the question is which role should we follow the German Library Association from the German point of view supports the idea that we actually want printed books and eBooks to be treated entirely equally.

So that basically the legal status of print books is also applied to eBooks at least when it comes to for instance distribution, dissemination, and web production, et cetera, et cetera.

This, however, may not work for other countries in Europe. So do we need some sort of like minimum level agreement which basically just – sort of like gives the more general idea about usage and exceptions and limitations of copyright? Or do we need something which is very, very precise that I think is still to be decided.

>> ELLEN BROAD: So talking of voluntary regulation, this is actually something that libraries and consumers and many other groups are very familiar with. Because the licensing environment is a form of voluntary regulation in that exceptions and limitations for the most part in legislation don’t – they can be overridden by voluntary regulation.

I would say for libraries, the licensing environment and the nature of this voluntary regulation of terms of use for the most part isn’t working. And that’s for two reasons.

The first is that it by its nature overrides the exceptions and limitations that we do have in place in law. But also it changes the dynamics of what a library is.

It changes the role of these institutions from being public interest institutions whose mission should not be dictated by particular fear of public library by whether they are physically located on the premises or not, the nature or the way in which they read the books.

So for example, they may have a visual impairment and require the book in a different format. They – you may have different understandings of time for your borrowing period.

We need to think very carefully about the extent to which the private market can replace the role for exceptions, limitations that were decided in the public interest.

And I think where we see the decisions being taken that to an extent it doesn’t work is in the United Kingdom who have just introduced a new provision in their Copyright Law that prevents the override of certain legislative exceptions and limitations by contract. And I think that is recognition that I think we will increasingly move towards a licensing environment. Just this week the Director General of WIPO mentioned his vision for a seamless global market for content. But I do not think that that will replace the need for legislative reform.

I think it goes to what Guido said, there will still need to be a minimum standard to ensure that some of the more holistic public interest ideals of copyright which have been in place since the beginning are maintained.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you, Ellen. And just as you can see, we only have – we only have three panelists so this is meant to be a discussion so when you hear something and you would like to react please do raise your hands and ask questions. This is not meant to be all about our panelists.

So okay, this is about copyright in Europe. So what do you think is the current state of Copyright Law in Europe? And I will turn to you, Ellen, before I go to Mathias because you are working for an international organization which is based in Mahigue (phonetic) and you are also dealing with issues as they emerge internationally. You participate at WIPO. I’ve seen you there. And you also have to deal with the European – in the European context. And Europe represents a whole bunch of libraries. You have such a diverse membership.

So how – what do you think the current state is? And does it facilitate the state that we currently experience in European Copyright Law? Does it facilitate bodies like libraries? But even beyond libraries if you know about other bodies, the challenges that they may face.

>> ELLEN BROAD: So the IFLA put in a submission to the European copyright consultation that really just repeated the reasons behind being at WIPO which is increasingly libraries and archives and a number of different groups are operating across country borders so the territorial nature of copyright is a real problem. In research increasingly we’re undertaking international research collaboration as one example. We also pointed to the licensing issues that I’ve talked about and the need to move towards a more open regime.

This is part of what we’ve been advocating for at WIPO, although, we haven’t gone so far as a flexible open ended exception because that would be very controversial in the WIPO context. To give you an understanding of how it relates to the European Union, something that has been very frustrating is that the European Union is currently undertaking its copyright consultation. And I think the recent decisions that we’ve seen of the ECJ indicate the extent to which the info direct in the European Union is in need of change that we are asking questions at the European Union level like should hyperlinking be an infringement of copyright really struck me coming from outside the civil law tradition. And I know that that’s something that changes the nature of how we consider copyright in the European Union that it has a very strong – I mean it is a civil law system that has a very strong moral rights tradition.

So these do differentiate it from the common law countries. But coming – so I’ve been involved in the UK copyright reform peripherally, some of the U.S. actions some trade agreements and in Australia. And the biggest observation I’ve had so far of the European process not only for libraries and archives but for other groups is who have been involved in the consultation is sometimes we’re talking about very basic aspects of the Internet.

So when we talk about hyperlinking, for example, or if we talk about indexing and caching and I would argue also text and data mining but I know that there are very strong views on text and data mining. But we’re talking about very basic elements of a functioning Internet. And in other countries that I’ve been involved in, the question as to whether these should be protected by copyright is never really treated as a serious question as in its simply well we need to be thinking of a productive digital economy first. And then how we can actually ensure that the legitimate rights of creators are protected.

I said to one of the European Commission officials if you actually went to far as to consider legislation, for example, that would consider certain necessary functioning of the Internet as potentially open to a licensing approach, then that’s at odds with the global Internet economy. In other jurisdictions we have not ever – so the Irish copyright consultation, the UK copyright consultation, Australia, the United States, these are no longer serious questions for consideration. We’re also seeing the increasing uptick of flexible regimes around the world in the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Israel.

So to be considering certain reforms in the European Union that potentially put it at odds with the rest of the world, it seems strange to me that some decisions were taken about what is a global Internet from a very European perspective.

So that’s perhaps my just observations as to how this has differed from me which it’s focused very much in the internal market here. Whereas some of the other reviews I’ve been involved in focus on its global competitiveness.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Mathias?

>> MATHIAS SCHINDLER: I fully agree with the assessment. We have been trying to figure out the process, how the series of 70 questions for the European Union consultation went. There might be psychological reasons for adding these questions to have some kind of plausible deniability scenario in which – or a scenario in which the Commission can properly claim that all interests of stakeholders have been considered. Even if the Commission doesn’t see this as a policy option at all and never has been seen as professes. I would hope this hasn’t ever been a policy option to consider breaking the Internet by means of copyright.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you, Mathias.

So actually we’ve heard that – and as we mentioned at the beginning, the Commission has launched a huge effort to reform potentially copyright and they had a call for public input that – and they received actually, as I said, an overwhelming amount of responses. I know that all of these three people have submitted comments. And I see faces in this room that I know have submitted comments.

So I would like to just go around and ask you briefly whether – how you perceived this process. Whether you – whether you welcomed such a process and what are your views of this European effort both in terms of process and substance and if you can be just a little bit brief.

I don’t want your full submission. I just want the feeling that you got interest that. Thanks, Mathias, I’ll start with you.

>> MATHIAS SCHINDLER: It’s now about a decade after INFOSOC was created and there should now be evidence on the – on the INFOSOC directive and there should be more data available and currently is about the implications about certain copyright decisions. So apart from the consultation and certain methodology of evaluation, copyright remains far too faith based. And I’m not sure if the European Commission will be able to introduce more data than currently is in play about the reform debate.

However, the consultation was a great opportunity in both answering questions and then to encourage people into participation.

So half of our time spent was given to answering the question. Half of the time went into building up an infrastructure to allow people to participate in the consultation more easily than the Commission allows.

And we have seen other efforts, including copywrong EU, fixed copyright. Some of the software was released and the free license and representatives from other parts of the industry copy to software encouraged their members to participate in it.

So the high level of participation is not just an indication of the topic hotness itself but also of the skill set of groups involved to mobilize their base.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you, Mathias. Ellen.

>> ELLEN BROAD: So I’ve already told you in a nutshell with what response was so I won’t repeat it.

On the process perhaps I’ll just say what I’m really interested to see from the release of the White Paper and the future progress of this is how dgMarket, who is undertaking the copyright consultation sees the White Paper and the impact assessment being integrated with some of the other reports that are being released by other DGs like DG research, for example, that acknowledge the overlap between copyright and research, for example, and ICTs. Because I think that there are a lot of other great thoughts being had around copyright in other DGs in the European Commission that I would really like to see integrated into the response from the European Commission.

They have had a challenging process in having received over 10,000 submissions and I know that there’s been some concern about how they are – how they intended to analyze those, whether it was possible to analyze those.

I know a part of me went bitterly – wept bitterly internally when I realized potentially my 40 page submission wouldn’t be read in detail. But that’s fine because I learned a lot about European copyright in the process.

But these are part of the nature of the beast. What I think would be really good is perhaps so we know a White Paper is coming out. We don’t know exactly what it will say. I think it would be a shame if it said something as simple as we should issue guidelines for Member States interpreting the information INFOSOC Director because I think more change than that is necessary.

Perhaps it’s time to undertake a review of the INFOSOC directive by a non European Commission department. So in the UK they had an external review the Hargreaves review in Ireland it was done by Professor Ian Hargreaves. In Australia it was the Reforms Commission so a lot of these views were taken out of the agency to look at somewhat subjectively the usefulness of the current regime.

>> GUIDO JANSEN: I can only echo what Ellen has said in particularly the skepticism the questions around how all of this input that has been received is now going to be digested and actually turned into some meaningful messages, which then can inform policy making.

Just to add that in Germany obviously due to the Federal structure of the country and the devolved responsibilities the input from cultural constitutions was from the German Council for culture to speak and that really worked very well but I wonder for example how representatives from small and medium sized enterprises actually made their voice heard because we heard about this in the plenary this morning. I have to say I felt the entire process of the consultation quite exclusive. I can’t see people for instance entrepreneurs who are self employed with a small or medium sized business or even their lobby groups who are working on a voluntary basis very often can put – give their input into this document which was quite long winded and quite a lot of time for completion.

So I’m not sure whether the results that the European Union got now, the input, is really a sort of like fair reflection of positions and views of the different stakeholders in European societies. But it’s better than nothing of course.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you very much. Anyone in here who has submitted comments to this consultation and would like to say something, that would be great. And I am following Twitter. And there is an artist in the room who is wondering he’s the only one. And also has concerns about fair use. It’s just fair use and parody and sampling and the loss of creators.

So I think whoever you are, please identify yourself. And please tell us why you are so passionate about those issues and whether you think that Copyright Law in Europe and the process we’re undertaking right now cannot raise those issues.

I can tell you that also a similar effort only to a much lesser scale has been undertaken in the United States. The United States Department of Took on the mission to – Department of Commerce took on the mission to ask questions. The difference we saw and this is actually where I would like the discussion to progressively move was that interestingly enough the United States Department of Commerce asked questions more about technology. Asked questions about the relationship between copyright and technology in terms of the compatibility and how Copyright Law can move towards facilitating the evolution of the Internet.

So anyone that would like to just make a comment based on your own submissions. Oh, fantastic, you’re the artist? Fantastic.

>> Yes, so okay. I tweeted that because I’m also American. But I’ve been researching in Europe for the last year. So as a digital virtual artist who engages in sampling and parody, et cetera, I think that most artists existing in that space only find out what the law is once they have broken it. And also the laws change depending on what country you’re working in and artists don’t really care about national borders. So there’s a kind of working with the U.S. and Europe and getting an idea about what this word copyright really means and what artists can do and then getting that out there to them in a way that they can understand. And then act appropriately. Because I don’t think that most artists really want to break the law. They just want to be part of a discourse.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you very much. So anyone else? Please. John.

>> JOHN LAPRISE: Hi, I’m John Laprise from Northwestern University. I’m a historian of technology and I would really like to sort of shift the discourse here because historically copyright is not about protecting content creators. If you go back to the origins of copyright, it’s about protecting the rights of content distributors. It’s about literally in merry old England if you’ve got a new book how many copies each printer can make. It’s literally a right to copy.

And if you look at the U.S. discourse in terms of technology, this is all about protecting content distributors in the U.S., whether it’s music, film, where the big money is in the U.S.

So the rhetoric of protecting creators in copyright is just that. It’s a political rhetoric. In point of fact, it’s the all about protecting content distributors.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. That was quite passionate. Thank you very much.

So in going back, anyone else would like to say anything about their submissions, please, Caroline.

>> CAROLINE GREER: Thank you. So Caroline Greer from the telecoms trade association. So we responded to the consultation very challenging paper. People often forget that telcos are also content providers. ISPs, et cetera.

So we had a very wide range of views. Enforcement came to my mind when you threw that out because telcos kind of got caught up in the intermediary reliability debate and kind of dragged into the enforcement discussion and I think from our perspective enforcement to us always seems like the sole solution to the copyright debate. Whereas we would sort of take it more from we need to look at the – at this debate in a more holistic way and let’s look at more ways of producing legal content. Not just looking at it on the defensive side I would be interested in hearing the panelist views on how they see intermediary – the whole intermediaries have on the enforcement side. Our view of course is that the system is working quite well, that ISPs, telcos collaborate in a very meaningful way we are always sort of uncomfortable around the discussions where we’re put into kind of a judgment role about making decisions on certain things.

Luckily a few ECJ cases have come up which sort of do very much present the view that there are a number of rights that need to be balanced.

So we think things were moving in the right direction there.

But yeah, what it always sort of comes back to the enforcement issue, to the role of intermediaries so I would be interested to hear some views there.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you, Caroline. And – oh, please. Go and we’ll react to that, yes.

>> Hello my name is Martin I’m here with the new media summer school and I had a project around that consultation. I mean we worked heavily also based on the Web site of the copywrongs admittedly. But I had a project to bring that consultation also towards young people working with youth councils and we also tried to consult with schools if you look at the consultation it was hardly understandable for any one person.

What we had to do is really do these – reduce these abstract questions to a more abstract and more general level to really find out what the positions might be. And then interpret.

I think the Commission is doing the same thing. But if you look then at the consultation processes, the people that are collecting answers from people that are not right into that process and then the Commission is trying to find also an abstract level from all these derived and put down to the essence consultation answers, I’m not sure that really the message is going across very well in that whole process.

And I also don’t feel that a lot of young people I think also a lot of average users on the Internet would really understand. And while I assume our contribution went on the monetization of content quite far from what was said earlier, I think on the understanding on really making copyright accessible for the average user we share very much the same position there.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. And I would really like to flag up exactly what you said. We haven’t done – and I think that this is a collective responsibility issue. We haven’t done a really good job especially in the context of copyright to explain what it is all about to the younger people.

These are the people who are using the Internet. These are the people who are going to create eventually. And they are going to innovate. And the Copyright Law currently at least the way it stands currently is extremely detached from someone who is 20 years old and has grown up using this or this.

So it is very important that any consultation actually exactly brings us back and explains the issues in a way that young people are able to relate.

But going back to the issue of intermediary reliability which is another Pandora’s box nobody really knows what’s going to come out of that once you open it I know as a moderator I’m not supposed to be making a lot of comments but I am going to because I have the microphone right now.

And intermediary reliability is not just about copyright. It is also about retaining a balance on the Internet of how the Internet works. And it is also about innovation.

It is not accidental that intermediaries have been excluded from liability. And it’s not accidental that because of that exclusion we have seen so much innovation taking place by those very intermediaries the fact that they are able to invest on the Internet the fact they are able to create new things on top of it the fact they are able to innovate that doesn’t mean that intermediaries do not have a set of responsibilities.

But the idea of assigning intermediaries a role that they were never meant to be having when they were entering this space and that role was to check what comes in and out of their channels in terms of content. So they know it’s continuing to send and oh we don’t are really like that so we take it down just because we are afraid that if we don’t we might be sued, we might be dragged to court and copyright lawsuits are lengthy and expensive nobody really wants them is something that we really need to try to avoid.

We need to come up with a system of collaboration, collaboration is already there perhaps it needs to be strengthened but the solution at least from my point of view is that we do not really need to actually start asking them to do things just because they are the Googles or just because they carry traffic through their channels.

And I will stop here because I just suddenly became very excited and I’ll pass it onto – before you go, if you can let very briefly our panelists react to the question from ETNO it would be great Mathias, just briefly.

>> MATHIAS SCHINDLER: It is our experience right now that there is a certain degree of overblocking. There is a certain degree of underchecking about the validity of claims being made. And whenever a term – the term collaboration comes up, this is something I’m highly sympathetic to ad a Wikipedian. However it feels like this term is also used to describe a process of privatization of law enforcement where the person no longer is able to respond to is not the law enforcement agency that follows a specific set of guidelines but rather a black box of corporate positions that go usually towards the risk avoidance rather than the fulfillment of given rights and privileges, so whenever possible. And this is a good occasion I refer to the research that’s been made by groups to see if bogus takedown notices are being vetted if there is anyone actually checking them. And the overwhelming result is no, no person, no group is actually checking them. Stuff gets blocked whenever you are able to come up with a fancy mail header, and a few claims. And this should be avoided.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you very much, Mathias. Ellen.

>> ELLEN BROAD: Okay. So in an Internet intermediary liability, I think we need to seriously assess the effectiveness of these regimes versus other initiatives like providing greater access to content and other forms of self regulation that move down the access corridor as opposed to simply thinking about it from an enforcement perspective. There’s some really great research that’s been undertaken by, for example, Professor Rebecca Giblin that’s compared a lot of existing graduated response themes throughout the world and measured their effectiveness. I want to return to the comments that were being made about educating young people about copyright and I think one of the profound problems we have with copyright is that in the Internet environment with the active copying is ubiquitous it just doesn’t make any sense.

You look at some of the changes to the UK copyright laws for example and we’re talking about things like making it now legal to use an interactive whiteboard in the classroom because that was an infringement of copyright but using a blackboard was fine. Like this is the type of thing we’re talking about. Because awful these digital uses inadvertently require the act of copying. I’ve said before at some point hopefully we’ll move away from the act of copying being central to the way we talk about copyright which I guess means we would have to change the name but we’re just going to keep encountering the same road blocks every five years. Every new innovation when we talk about permissionless innovation my concern is in a lot of jurisdictions we’re talking about any new use online could be presumptively illegal regardless of whether there’s harm to the copyright holder.

And that I think is something that we need to seriously think about. And not in a sense of well how can we then undertake a licensing process to make it legal. It’s well actually what impact – let’s return to the true nature of the Three Step Test and whether there is harm to the copyright holder.

>> GUIDO JANSEN: Well on the question of intermediaries I’m not clear if I can speak about the role of ISPs there but I just would like to remind people that indeed libraries have also played this role of intermediary when it comes to granting or providing access to ICT and to the Internet.

And I think a lot of you may have heard about this – the cases that emerged after new legislation in the U.S. after 9 11 I think it was the Patriot Act on the basis of which at some point libraries were approached and librarians were approached by Government agencies with the request to disclose the lending – the borrowing behavior of their users and also with I think requests regarding the usage of Internet in their environment et cetera, et cetera and I think a very lengthy lawsuit occurred which only after quite a while resulted in a – what’s this called in English non acquital, like not sentenced. So the libraries basically – or the librarians in fact because it was individuals who actually – who refused to hand out this data to official authorities, Government authorities, who were then you know put on trial, they were acquitted that’s the word I was looking for.

And the other thing that I wanted to mention was on you know the second point that you made about – oh just remind me what was your second point. Well, we will get back to it.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thanks. Can we – please I think you have a question or comment.

>> MAX VON GRAFENSTEIN: Hi, my name is Max von Grafenstein. I’m a researcher at a research institute in Berlin specialized in Copyright Law I would just like to add something what you mentioned, you mentioned before so if it’s about balancing the different interests of all participants of cultural markets, I think the main problem for this right balance is especially in the copyright directives, this assumption that only a very high level of copyright protection can foster innovation and creativity on the European market. And this is an assumption and there are no empirical studies that really can prove this assumption that it’s right or the opposite. And so I think this should be really post or it – it should be posed or it should be questioned for changing Copyright Law. Because from this assumption, you conclude, for example, this systematic – it’s systematic that copyright protection for the copyright holder is the rule. And then the exceptions must be interpreted very strictly. And this distorts a bit the balance. It’s just a thought.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you very much. I think, yes, you also have an intervention. Thanks.

>> CHRISTIAN SOMMER: Thank you. My name is Christian Sommer. I represent the MPA in Germany and of course we also submitted quite lengthy comments to the copyright consultation. And I would like to go back a little bit. Unfortunately I just got the microphone so the discussion advanced a little bit.

But to what was kind of mentioned earlier. And I heard like some words outdated and copyright was broken. But I also heard the words evidence for example and like proof for example.

And I would say and challenge – basically challenge some of these assumptions and basically what was used to frame this discussion namely that copyright is outdated for example. I don’t think so. I think copyright is not outdated. I think the currently framework that we currently have in Europe and also in Germany gives flexibility for basically the whole ecosystem and the environment to react basically to technology developments, to basically provide a framework that is still fit for purpose and doesn’t need to be turned upside down basically.

We have seen many ECJ decisions over the past couple of months and years that actually clarified some open questions in the context of how to basically apply the current framework. And just because the copyright directive is some ten plus years old I think doesn’t make it outdated. I think it provides the flexibility and there is no basically evidence that it’s necessary to basically change fundamentally the copyright system as it is.

You could use the same argument because intermediaries were mentioned, as well. For the e commerce directive for liability rules back then basically it was the assumption that just like it was just pipes that were kind of the Internet that advanced as well. We don’t have like dumb pipes anymore in terms of technology in terms of the Internet infrastructure with the same argument you would need to basically do the same discussion with respect to basically those pipes.

Think of search. How search advanced over the past couple of years. How important and what a fundamental role it plays right now. And then back then the framework for search was based on the assumption that is it is kind of a dumb technology that doesn’t have like any sort of say intelligent component but I just want to make the point that I think that copyright is fit for purpose. Those who advocate for change and reform basically need to prove why. And I haven’t heard like any convincing I would say argument that copyright is broken. That it needs to be fixed.

I think this is the second step before the first. The first step really to like provide the evidence and prove that there is actually the need for such reform. That’s to keep it brief my comment.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you very much. I would – oh, if there is another question. Sorry. I have you at my back. Thank you.

>> ANNIE MACHON: Thank you. My name is Annie Machon. I’m a former British intelligence officer and now a writer amongst many other things so a fellow creator.

I do disagree very much with the last statement. I think the Internet has broken copyright totally. In fact when I publish, I always use Creative Commons licenses so anyone can read my stuff for free, download it, copy it, use it, whatever, but the argument I would suggest about why copyright is dead or is dieing is also for security reasons because at the moment we have a situation where the – and I agree with the gentleman at the table who said that the distributors are the beneficiaries mainly the distributors run in all 20th Century broken business model in my view. And they are fighting a very violent action to try to prop up this failing business model in the face of Internet advances.

And doing this they are getting involved in trying to SWOT team raids like the .com site in New Zealand where we see students being extradited to the U.S. from the UK for just having a Web site that acts as a signpost like Google does or YouTube does to copyrighted material and we also see them lobbying the governments and by definition the intelligence agencies in order to develop tools so that they can be more invasive to find out who is downloading copyright material of whatever nature across the Internet.

So we have a situation where they are now pushing for deep packet inspection which means going right into the little tiny bits that are being passed across the Internet if they get that then none of us is safe no one can use proper encryption and spice love all of these types of innovations as much as the copyright beneficiaries that’s why I think it’s broken we all need to be very aware of this not just because of the damage that’s done to individuals but also the damage that will be done to all of our freedoms on the Internet if these laws are allowed to continue and indeed expand so that’s my view.

(Applause)

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Anyone else? Any questions before I go to our panelists and hear their reactions to those passionate comments from both sides of the pond? Please.

>> I’m very happy to be here. I think the libraries have a large duty to go into the countryside into the village. We presently do some pilot projects to really not to forget the book. In the ’80s we tried to bring the canyon of coded and non coded data harmonization with different cultural expressions different sign systems together. And to really reach acceptance, follow my tweets and I feel it is really high time that we overcome all of these canyons and these mind sets that the symbol icon index and they can be even dynamic.

So I think libraries have the duty to not forget the book but to go to integrated approaches as we do in Germany with an institute for sustainability in work, learning and culture.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. Okay. If there is no one else, I can’t see anyone else, I will start with Mathias. Reactions?

>> MATHIAS SCHINDLER: The first reaction is gratitude for your input. The second point is at a certain ironic level I completely agree with Mr. Summers comment in the need for more data. We might have completely different conclusions or maybe different presumptions or whatever. Maybe we live in different worlds. But I would argue that we – that the concession of having a broken copyright system has already been made during the often works debate by everyone involved including the copyright industry which is affected by often works, as well. And you might say that there has been a small patch attached to the problem of open works by the directive of often works and certain national implementations or you could argue this doesn’t affect copyright as such. It’s simply a nuisance that the fact that basically the 20th Century wealth of information is really no longer usable.

I would argue otherwise. But at least I fought before – I thought before your comment that we were already beyond this point of debating of whether there is a problem.

Certainly and this is important and there are some echoes of this sentiment here. The need for proper evaluation and the need for data, the need for a certain mindset that is questioning the previous assumptions, I mean we entered this discussion here under the assumption that copyright is needed.

I’m fine with entering such a discussion here. However every bit of the current copyright legislation should be subject to questioning whether it’s needed. And I would start with copyright terms, for example, because they seem to be a cause for certain problems we all encounter.

So that’s my statement.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. Ellen.

>> ELLEN BROAD: Okay. There were so many great contributions. I’m going to try to touch on each of them.

The first about – you know the current system doesn’t need to be changed. Were you talking about the INFOSOC directive itself? Okay so perhaps I’ll just say what we said about the INFOSOC directive so first of all exceptions and limitations are not mandatory they are optional which has resulted in a patchwork implementation across Member States so first of all that’s what we would want to change about that directive the second is last year’s DeWolf Study fundamental questioned the right of reproduction in libraries archives for INFOSOC would have new uses for data mining or preservation if we’re in a situation where to undertake digital preservation of our own collection material is an infringement of copyright in the EU then I would say yes in that respect the INFOSOC directive is broken the second point I want to touch on is returning to the ways in which the – how we use material online is increasingly being monitored or controlled by different copyright holders.

Because I completely agree with you, this is something that libraries are very familiar with now. When we license databases, we are also permitting the monitoring of those databases by publishers for certain activities and we have found ourselves in situations for example where a publisher detects what it considers an illegitimate use of a database it will remove access to the entire database for the entire university population.

So we’re talking about penalties that go beyond what we would think would be legitimate in this context. As in to have an entire university population denied access to mandatory textbooks for monitoring – for uses that were monitored on that database, I think that’s a concern.

I also see real concern for everybody outside of this room, people who aren’t aware of copyright of how actually our online participation in science and culture is being shaped by the types of technological protection measures by the territoriality of our licensing regimes without us even being aware of it. We are increasingly moving into a situation where if you’re a kind of unknowing consumer on the Internet you take a passive approach to the content that’s presented to you if certain content isn’t available to you in your country you don’t have the resources to otherwise locate it then you just encounter a dark hole in the cultural record.

The types of things that we now see that prevent mashing up and remixing of content, I know that it will only be some creators who want to undertake it. But I think of the ease with which these types of innovative uses of copyright material could take place before the Internet. Like was it William Burrows who did the newspaper he cut all of the pieces of newspaper who dropped them on the floor and wrote a new story based on how the newspaper fell down so I think those kinds of things that don’t require a level of technical expertise but just this ability to engage with reinterpret explore content is being increasingly eroded one final comment because I know that Konstantinos is giving me the eye. When we talk about access and Internet intermediary liability I just want to go back to my original content that I think we need to focus on access first before we go first down the path of further Internet intermediary enforcement mechanisms because just to give you one example of when I arrived in Germany.

So I would say at least from my perspective, this aspect of access to content in Germany is definitely not working. So has everyone seen that chandelier video? Some people are nodding but if you’re based in Germany you’re probably going to say no basically what I discovered yesterday so I had seen a lot of parodies of this on the Internet I read a lot of blog posts about how fantastic it was I saw it had been presented on Ellen I thought finally now I’m going to watch it got out to YouTube put it in see the artist video page this is the artist you can’t watch it in Germany because the YouTube has been in a contracting dispute with GEMA since 2009 they have been able to license it in 45 other countries but in Germany you just can’t access it. And to me that’s kind of like a profound problem in terms of to me it goes beyond well I’m sorry you just can’t access that piece of content to we’re kind of shaping the cultural engagement that citizens have based on where they are located and that is a problem for me.

(Applause)

>> GUIDO JANSEN: I’m obviously very grateful for the sort of confirmation of the societal role of libraries that was in one of the comments and obviously this is not the topic of the conversation that we’re having here. But just to add that many libraries in their strategies and also many countries in their national strategies define libraries in the future as public third spaces be it physical or also virtual spaces where library support – libraries support citizens in exerting their rights to education, to access to political participation, et cetera, et cetera. One other point that I wanted to comment on and that actually was the point that I was referring to earlier, which was mentioned by Ellen, that’s the conception of copyright still being combined with something physical. This is basically what also the current model of for instance the eBook service in libraries in Germany is based on.

Germany has adopted eBooks quite early. I mean German library community compared to other European countries. And a number of service providers have emerged aggregators who basically for the libraries take care of the licensing and the contracting with publishers so that libraries don’t have to do this themselves. They basically just subscribe to the service for a fee and then can choose a set of titles which they can offer to their users.

The background of this arrangement is obviously current copyright and still the idea that there is some sort of physical copy involved because it’s all based on downloading.

Now, the system works quite fine to a certain degree, although some publishing groups are not participating, some big publishing groups. But the problem that we see now is that this is side lined by technological development because the models of other countries who now start to offer eBooks through service providers such as libraries is based on streaming. And streaming obviously is going to be the future you know for this particular way of service delivery. And has all sorts of different implications compared to the German model which is still based on downloading where you have at least you know interim physical copies somewhere on somebody’s computer so I do think that copyright probably needs to evolve there to cover this area.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. So we have 15 minutes left. I would like to – you have been asking questions. Please ask – this is your chance for interventions, comments. I see John is having a question. And please.

>> Thank you. I just want to – I agree strongly with Ellen on this. And I want to point out another place where copyright is really broken, if we move to an international standpoint. And that is the availability of digital content globally is really problematic in the – Developing World copyright is broken in Developing World because nobody will pay 10 euro for a movie when that will feed their family for a month and piracy is in piracy like I want to go watch a movie and finding access to that content, it’s out there I’m actually working in the Gulf right now. No one even thinks about copyright – whether I’m violating copyright or not in among my students that’s for sure.

So in the OECD world, yes, copyright has some teeth, but outside there. And most of the rest of the people in the world are outside of the OECD, you’ve got a huge group of users who are now coming online this is like the next sort of chunk of new users for the Internet. And they are all coming from places which are less affluent and they are not going to be willing to accept copyright restrictions for content. Because they just can’t afford it.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Anyone else?

Questions, come on, come on. Oh, thank you. Caroline.

>> Thanks. So since we’re on the international theme and going back to my point about collaboration, I wonder are there any views on the American CCIA system which appears from the first report that appeared recently to have worked quite well. We’re interested. We look at it from a European perspective. I wonder to what extent that could be replicated in Europe because the European market is way more complex. But any views from anybody on how that’s working.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Anyone want to take that question?

Well, I can take that.

So – and that was what I was referring to in the beginning when we started this discussion about voluntary initiatives and self regulation and whether perhaps this is an alternative way of thinking of addressing some of those problems that we see emerging in some of the – and some of the concerns that all parties are having. I was referring actually to the copyright alert system in the U.S.

So this was a system based on for those of you who are not familiar with it, it was a collaborative effort between various ISPs and the content industry in order to come up with a set of rules or principles that would be able to address the issue of copyright infringement and downloading of illegal content – well of copyrighted content better yet.

So the system went through a lot of phases. And this is not a criticism. It is a brand new system. It was meant to go through these phases. A lot of lessons and mistakes were made. And those mistakes were taken on board.

It was over the – over the course of the discussions and over these collaborative efforts more and more transparency was appearing on the system.

It operates on the basis that users are sent six notifications after the third one there are some sanctions but nobody gets disconnected and that was a very hard fought battle but certain groups certain interest groups that participated in its formation. So basically we’re seeing slowing of bandwidth or you know – or any other measures but nobody gets disconnected.

The great thing about it is that it has some checks and balances that would not necessarily have experienced in other parts of this copyright debate or other initiatives that we see in other parts of the world outside even the United States. There’s a body – the Advisory Council is a multi stakeholder which is a huge, huge win if you want for a system that was not able to operate traditionally under the multi stakeholder structures so this is an indication that also copyright discussions are opening up to different views. And yes the first report was positive. I think – and I know that there are more things that need to be addressed. There are more accountable processes that need to be in place. But as far as voluntary initiatives go, especially in such a heated and difficult complex controversial issue, I am very optimistic that this is a system that potentially can prevent a lot of – not prevent necessarily but can address a lot of the concerns that are out there.

And legislators and policymakers can actually learn from much of the process and much of the substance. I know that a similar initiative is taking place in the UK. And I am at least reading – I haven’t had the chance to read the actual – the substance of the outcome of these initiatives. That they are not necessarily following the path of the United States.

So it would be very interesting – and this goes back to we – we literally all need to sit down and start talking. And start talking about what is the best way to address this issue. It has gone – we heard from John. There are some parts of the world that apparently, you know, are downloading copyrighted material is sort of okay. Well that is problematic. And I don’t think that anyone in this room is going to advocate that yes, let’s all start downloading movies and music for free.

We need to find a system that is able to do this. In order to do this, there needs to be a lot of information. There needs to be – I am not going to use the word education because I personally find it a little bit tricky. But we need to inform and we need to be able and provide facts, evidence. We’ve heard that a lot, also. We need to be able, also, and move the discussions into finding solutions. We have identified the problems. We have identified the challenges. Right now it’s time more to start identifying those tools that will allow us to address the issues for libraries which are essential parts of this system. Then we’ll be able to address the issues of Wikipedia. These are new businesses they are hip businesses that everybody likes, that everybody wants to use, that everybody wants to provide content.

And when you provide that content, you shouldn’t be really scared as to whether your content – well as to whether you’re going to be sued. As to whether you’re going to be extradited as we heard before. Generally speaking the Internet needs to facilitate creativity and innovation. I will stop here. I’m ranting I think. So any other questions before I go – please.

Oh, is there. Okay.

>> MATTHIJS VAN BERGEN: Hi my name is Matthijs Van Bergen. I’m from the ICTRecht party. I was surprised why you would assume that no one in the room would advocate free file sharing or free downloaded content.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: I apologize for the assumption.

>> Basically sharing of culture and knowledge has been a human instinct forever. We have always done this. We did it before copyright. We did it before the Internet the only difference is with the Internet we have been good at it and suddenly that comes into conflict with the copyright regime that was never intended to regulate normal people but to regulate business. So I would say that the instinct to share is not a problem. The problem is the copyright and if we can fix that, then we can have these free downloads and that will actually boost the digital economy because it will create the demand.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. Yes. Oh, you already have one.

>> Is this on?

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: I don’t think it’s on. So let me give you this one.

>> Okay. My name is Sander Filma (phonetic). I’m a blogger and web developer and entrepreneur. And yeah, I really agree with Ellen’s statements about the chandelier video. That it’s not available in Germany. You clearly see that the content industry is having this divide and conquer policy. And trying to extract as much money as possible and clinging onto a 20th Century business model wherefore thousands of years or for millions of years in fact humanity as a whole, society as a whole has benefited greatly from sharing openly and building upon each other’s work and standing upon shelters of giants so as a whole as a society I think copyright needs to reform and really needs to move on. That’s why initiatives like Creative Commons for instance are such a good idea in fact. Okay. That was it. Thank you.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you very much.

>> Just general comments. I need to say that I’m not exactly the fan of all of this copyright stuff. I’m among students. And I have a harsh discussions about all of these copyright and copy left stuff myself I’m from Georgia. I don’t know if you know that country. But still we have a Developing Country which means we are taking Germany USA Developed Countries like that as an example and their legislation are shaping ours.

So what I’m really worried is that the YouTube that I enjoy so much right now back at home and where you can watch all of the videos one can think of will soon not look like that if we are taking examples of Germany and USA.

So I would like – I would like to see really that the German legislators or legislators at the EU level will soon reform all of this copyright legislation so that the users are happy, as well. Otherwise, I’m not sure I’ll be sitting here if – for the next EuroDIG so maybe instead I’ll be in jail because I’m too addicted to Pirate Bay. So that’s just a general point of view of mine.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you very much.

Do we have any remote participants? Nothing. So – do you want to make an intervention – okay. Sorry.

>> I’m glad for the Creative Commons comment from over there basically I think that’s actually proof that the system is working. Because Creative Commons is existing in the current environment it’s based on the existing rules and to me it is evidence and proof that the current environment is fit for purpose and basically provides like the framework necessary for Creative Commons and alternative licensing models to basically, yeah, be developed and flourish basically. So I don’t think that’s kind of contradictory. I think it actually proves that point that it’s flexible enough.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: So we have five minutes. And I don’t think we have other questions. I will ask each one of our panelists to just literally one minute just sum it up. And I don’t want you to sum up. I want you to approach your minute as to what you got out of this discussion. Okay? So what are the messages that you have received from all of these people that have made an intervention and that you are going to take back to your respective bodies and organizations. Guido?

>> GUIDO JANSEN: Wow that’s a task. Well, as I said before, one message that I have received is I sensed quite some sympathy in the room for the course of libraries or perhaps the people who don’t really think that libraries should have the functions that have been described before. Just were very politely silent so I really will take this back to our team that’s also involved in lobbying work. And that for instance has quite successfully worked on getting at least two points into the coalition treaty of the current German Government i.e. that the coalition will consider the introduction of exceptions and limitations for culture and education in legislation this copyright in Germany and that it will also consider granting libraries the right to license eBooks not on which conditions but just simply that they can do that.

And I would shamelessly like to exploit this opportunity to point you all to our campaign again, the Y2 e read and the petition that’s been set up on change.org so if you type change.org libraries you should get to the petition of EBLIDA the European Library Association where European libraries basically ask the European Commission for a framework that allows libraries to provide digital content as well as print content. Thank you.

>> ELLEN BROAD: Okay I’m kind of not going to do what you told me to do but I will do it in one minute because I’ve heard a lot of love in the room for the need to reform copyright but I also want to thank our colleague from the MPA because I’m conscious we didn’t have any people representing industries on the panel because there are very different views as to how significant copyright reform is and how greatly the environment needs to change.

So I think I hear these kinds of conversations all the time. I have a lot of these good conversations that reflect my views and how important it is. But what is missing is influence and action at the level where it is needed to actually reform the laws. Like if we think they need to be changed then we need to be much more strategic in how we approach this. We need to mobilize. We need to ensure that there is momentum here to move towards reform. If we think that this is important.

Basically I would just say that we need to take this conversation outside of the forums that are really just among our friends and to the policymakers and to the legislators and create momentum for this.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you, Ellen, even though you didn’t do as asked. Mathias.

>> MATHIAS SCHINDLER: So far I’m happy for the response and I’m trying to remember the organizations they are coming from because I would like to see you again the moment the White Paper is being released and the impact assessment and then to see if the Commission chooses to provide the forum for you to participate in this one to see if necessary and what kind of change there is possible.

I think the only organization so far I’ve seen who has been advocating against tremendous reform has fortunately been here next to the table maybe next time on the time. But I think the –

>> (Off microphone).

>> MATHIAS SCHINDLER: Yeah, of course. The one thing I really took from this thing is it’s the inability to enter this topic without any kind of premise. I think the conversation would have been completely different if we would have agreed on asking for the need for copyright at all or the intention of going back to a where you mentioned Mathias you called it instincts where the instinct of sharing is being acknowledged as something inherently good which it currently isn’t from the point of Copyright Law.

>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you all very much. I would like to thank our panelists as well as everybody who has been here making an intervention or not. This has been as always extremely exciting. So thank you very much. And enjoy your lunch.

(Applause)

Final report from working group

Draf final report(in progress)

Pictures from working group

Link

Session twitter hashtag

Hashtag: #eurodig_ws6