What does the recently revisited Belgian copyright law for scholarly publications say, actually ? | Ouvertures immédiates / Immediate openings

"My previous blog post triggered a lot of interpretations on the actual content, extend and meaning of the amendments to the Belgian copyright law. The best response is the actual text, translated here....

Except for the potential loophole of the King (i.e. the Federal Government)’s good will who can, for some obscure reason (publishers’ lobbying ?) extend the embargo period in an undefined way, and which appears as a very weak point, the rest of the text is quite strong: the right to re-publish and re-use is mandatory and irrecusable. It overrides any previous contract between the author and the publisher, even anterior to the law itself.

Of course, one would presume it applies to Belgian citizens in a scholarly institution in Belgium, leaving a fuzzy zone when the author is working abroad transiently or when he/she is a coauthor among foreign researchers…."