Category: law

A consultative meeting concerning the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement between the European Union and the United States (TTIP) has recently taken place in the polish Ministry of Economy.

Representatives of the Modern Poland Foundation) participated in this meeting as well in the hope that the Ministry of Economy, in response to our request for public information, would present related documents. Other participants of this meeting were guests from the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Ministry of Administration and Digitization and representatives of the European Commission in Warsaw. Such representation of the authorities indicates how great importance they attach to this matter. However, this meeting has not resulted in any specific information.

Over a month ago, the Modern Poland Foundation posed two questions to the Ministry of Economy regarding the currently negotiated TTIP treaty:

1. What is the current shape of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) treaty in the context of exclusive rights to intangible goods (in other words so called intellectual property rights)? We are particularly interested in provisions concerning the copyright law.

2. What is the Polish negotiating position regarding the provisions concerning intellectual property rights?

On the 25th of March we received the following response from the Ministry of Economy:

Dear Mr President,

In reference to your enquiry from the 12th of February 2014, I kindly inform you that the talks regarding intellectual property laws (IPR) within the TTIP are not advanced at the very moment. Until now, the USA and the EU were concentrated on the general range of the TTIP and the analysis of the partners’ positions in particular areas of the treaty.

However, it should be pointed out that all the information the EU member states obtained from the European Commission is classified and it is not possible to pass it on outside the state administration. This also concerns the Foundation’s request to access the text of the chapter on IPR and the Polish stance in this matter.

In compliance with the EU practices, the text of the treaty will be made available only in the final stage of the negotiations, after the signing of the document by both parties.

Yours sincerely,
Minister
Grażyna Henclewska
Deputy Minister of Economy

The last sentence appears to be particularly interesting in the context of the Polish experience with ACTA. One of the accusations towards the treaty is that it will impede any possible changes to the current copyright system, especially with regards to the potential extension of fair use and users’ rights. It seems that we will witness a similar situation with the TTIP. Social organizations insist on removing from the treaty any matters related with exclusive rights to intangible goods, including copyright. We believe that they should be analyzed and streamlined by the dedicated organizations and treaties, i.e. WIPO and the Berne Convention, while all countries should be free to their shape exclusive rights in accordance with their citizens’ interests.

In early December 2103 the European Commission announced consultations regarding copyright in the European Union. After the last year’s failure of the Licenses of Europe process, we hope that this time the Commission will much more strongly account for citizens’ opinions on the subject of creating new legal frames for our future use of culture in the Internet.

To encourage citizens to particpate in the European Commission consultations on copyright, we prepared a useful platform in Polish, which made it easy to answer the 80 questions posed by the Commission.

We are positively surprised with the great public response to the consultations. We have noted over 800 forms downloaded from the platform. The Commission promised to present the full data as soon as possible. We already know that over 11 000 responses were submitted.

The Modern Poland Foundation also prepared an official position paper in reply to the consultations in which we underline that copyright should take into account the perspective of citizens’ freedoms.

The full text of the position paper in English

The Modern Poland Foundation is taking part in the ongoing public consultations regarding the copyright system announced by the European Commission.

They last till February 5, 2014 which leaves citizens of the European Union only 2 weeks to express their opinion on such copyright-related topics as: should linking and browsing be legal? do we have the right to download files? can we have full access to library collections online? how should authors be remunerated for their work? what are the limits of fair use? should terms of copyright protection be shorter? and many others.

The broad coalition of organizations led by C4C, with the Modern Poland Foundation as one of its members, prepared an online tool making it easier for people to go through the complicated process of the consultations. The website is also connected with the platform for polish speaking users prepared by the Modern Poland Foundation.

The aim of the Coference Card Game is to make you think about the meaning of words and the influence your speaking habits have on the reality. You may disagree with some or all of our opinions. However, we will be more than happy if we make you think more critically, consciously and carefully while using copyright language.

There are 52 cards in a deck. Each card refers to a single popular word used in the copyright debate. Even very few people in the conference room using the cards can raise awareness of the importance of the copyright language.

More information on the Conference Card Game copyspeak.org.

Buy a deck to share the idea with your friends.

Ruling in Google Books Library case was announced last week by Judge Denny Chin.

The decision referrers to the litigation between Authors Guild and Google which has been still ongoing despite the settlement concluded between Google and APP last year. The main issue to examine after rendering the case by the Court of Appeals to the District Court for the Southern District of New York, was whether Google’s Project could fit into fair use frames.

Presentation of prof. Eben Moglen at the CopyCamp conference is available at copycamp.pl.

On the 1st of October 2013, the II International CopyCamp conference was held in Warsaw, in Muranów cinema. The event was devoted to the subject of copyright in Poland and abroad and had strong representation in both guests of the conference and its participants. 43 presentations on various aspects of copyright given by lawyers, artists, medievists, sociologists, philosophers, economists, cultural managers, representatives of business, etc. proved that the subject of copyright is interesting and crucial for all of us.

We are pleased to announce that we have started an open call for speakers at CopyCamp 2013 – the international conference devoted to the subject of copyright.

Everyone who is interested in the subject of copyright and would like to express their opinion can submit a presentation proposal by the 27th of August. The presentation summary of max. 1800 characters should be submitted at copycamp.pl. On the basis of the proposal summary, the appointed jury will select about 20 speakers of this year’s CopyCamp. *Please note: your presentation should not exceed 10 minutes.

Please find more information at copycamp.pl!

We are happy to present a film reportage from the conference Copyright – in search of flexibility, which took place on May 24, 2013 in Zachęta – National Gallery of Art. The conference was devoted to searching of possible flexibilities of the current copyright system in Poland in the context of the European legislation.

The keynote speaker of the conference was prof. Bernt Hugenholtz from the Institute of Information Law at the University in Amsterdam.

The meeting was organized by the international coalition Copyright for Creativity with cooperation of Modern Poland Foundation and Centrum Cyfrowe: Projekt Polska.

The film is available under the CC BY-SA licence.