Heiko Richter

Position Statement of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition on the Proposed Modernisation of European Copyright Rules Part B Exceptions and Limitations (Art. 3 – Text and Data Mining)

In Article 3 of the “Proposal for a Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market COM(2016) 593 final” the European Commission suggests an exception for text and data mining (TDM). While, in principle, a clear legal framework for TDM is to be welcomed, the proposed provisions are to be criticized regarding their scope and the applied regulatory method. This Position Statement develops an alternative proposal: Since TDM is to be seen as a normal use of works and other protected subject-matter, a field exemption is suggested allowing everyone to carry out TDM related to lawfully accessible works or other subject-matter. This includes the permission to extract contents of databases and to make reproductions for the sole purpose of TDM. Moreover, research organizations also need to carry out TDM regarding content to which they do not have lawful access. The proposal includes a specific provision obliging rightholders who market works or other subject-matter primarily for research purposes to provide datasets suitable for TDM only, for which they may request a reasonable payment.

Private Power, Online Information Flows and EU Law: Mind the Gap, by Angela Daly

1 This book, which is part of the Hart Studies in Competition Law series, may, at first glance, seem to fall outside the scope of the main areas of interest for many scholars in intellectual property, information technology, and e-commerce law. However, the European Commission’s issuance of a Statement of Objections to Google regarding comparative shopping services, the opening of a formal competition law investigation into Google’s conduct related to the Android mobile operating system, both in 2015, followed by a 2016 report of the French and German competition authorities on competition law and the collection and use of data, should have put an end to any doubt about the interest of competition law to the sectors such scholars study. Furthermore, this book’s subject matter is not limited to competition law and concerns European Union telecommunications regulation, privacy and data protection law, the right to free expression, and technical measures intended to limit the impact of concentrations of private economic power on online information flows as well.