Lo spettro della riforma del copyright su ricerca e didattica | Il Bo Live UniPD

[google transl.] The spectre of copyright reform on research and education

In addition to raising concerns about the free movement of information on the Internet (Article 11 on link tax and Article 13 on the system of filters), the reform of the copyright directive approved on Wednesday, September 12 in the European Parliament introduces, along with other articles, some measures that affect some fundamental rights for today's knowledge society, one above all that of free access to information.

According to Antonella De Robbio, coordinator of the study group Aib (Italian Association of Libraries) on open access and public domain as well as CEO of E-Lis, the international repository for the disciplines Lis (Library and Information Science), the reform of copyright not only concerns the protection of the interests of journalists and publishers, but also has serious consequences and especially for organizations that deal with research such as universities, that deal with teaching such as schools (students and teachers), or that deal with digital preservation such as libraries.

Any comment on the approval of this reform?

Meanwhile, the fact that it has been approved does not exclude the fact that the legislation will be subject to other steps: first there will be the European Council and then Italy will have 18 months to transpose the directive with a legislative decree. Apart from all the debates that have taken place around Articles 11 and 13, the issues that are most important to me are those relating to the so-called exceptions (to copyright, ed.) for teaching and research. The European directive should have harmonised a regulatory situation that today is extremely fragmented in every European country. This reform, on the other hand, does not contain any clear exceptions for teaching, leaving in uncertainty teaching practices that currently have different regulatory clauses from country to country. Even for research there are no exceptions for the benefit of Open Access and this is very worrying, considering that the EU itself with projects such as Horizon2020 expressly requests to open the results of research. It is hoped that in the subsequent stages of the transposition process there will be a willingness to remedy this fragmentation between countries. However, we will have to see how many and which amendments have been adopted in this first phase.