Evidence shows that EU copyright policy restricts data mining by academic researchers | European Policy for Intellectual Property 10th Annual Conference

"Digital text and data mining opens many new research opportunities. Copyright and database legislation in the EU endows rights holders with greater control over follow-up research than in most other territories. According to a paper presented at the European Policy for Intellectual Property (EPIP 2015) conference in Glasgow, organized by CREATe (Research Councils UK Copyright Centre), this is associated with significantly less data mining research in EU Member States compared to other major economies.Online activities generate vast amounts of data that are already of substantial commercial value. It also becomes much cheaper to access, combine and jointly analyse data that has been collected by academic researchers over decades. Copyrights and related rights affect incentives to supply suitable data for data mining; they also influence, who is able to conduct data mining. It is hard to predict what type of copyright policy will best support the efficient adoption of new research methods. The stakes are high and the debate around copyright and data mining in the EU has become acrimonious ..."