Copyright Proposal Threatens to Undermine Europe's AI Ambitions | BSA TechPost

"Next week, the European Parliament plenary will vote on one of its most controversial files to date – the Copyright Directive. The new legislation touches upon a number of thorny issues that have been the subject of intense debate, yet its Article 3 – aiming to regulate Text and Data Mining (TDM) – is often overlooked.

The current proposal would create a narrow exception for TDM, exclusively applying to non-commercial research organizations and only when they are engaged in purely “scientific” research. Such an approach would render the EU an international outlier and undermine the Commission’s ambitions for transforming Europe into a global hub for the development of artificial intelligence (AI). If the text is adopted in its current form, European AI researchers would find themselves at a strategic disadvantage to their global competitors. Indeed, recent legal developments in Japan highlight just how out-of-step the Commission’s proposal is with international norms."