Educational Licences in Europe | Communia report by Teresa Nobre

"Educational Licences in Europe

The European Union is coming closer to approving a mandatory educational exception that may address some of the limitations copyright law places on everyday educational activities. However, the current proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market would allow licences that are easily available in the market to take precedence over the educational exception.

An analysis of 10 agreements in Finland, France, and the United Kingdom shows that educational licences contain terms and conditions disadvantageous to schools:

Licences restrict the scope of protection of the educational exceptions

The agreements foresee various types of conditions to the permitted uses (e.g. technological limitations), which are not imposed by the educational exceptions. Some of the restrictions are introduced by contractual definitions of certain concepts of the law, such as what the terms “commercial” and “illustration for teaching” purposes mean.

Licences grant questionable rights to right holders

All of the agreements grant the right to check compliance with the licence to right holders. They may inspect materials, secured networks and storage platforms, and even enter the schools’ premises at any time, provided they give reasonable notice to schools. Only one agreement prevents right holders from disclosing sensitive information obtained in those inspections, such as data related with the performance of students. None of these agreements prohibits commercial uses of such data....

Read more in the new Communia report by Teresa Nobre, “Educational Licences in Europe”, available at https://www.communia-association.org/C4ed"